Not Only the SHSAT — Learn the SAT

In our opinion, New York City has taken the SHSAT in an exciting and somewhat different direction than other school districts. The original motivation was to make the SHSAT more accessible and deliver an exam that better reflects what students learn in the classroom while providing the same level of difficulty for 8th and 9th grade NYC students. We believe this will prove to be a sage step in the right direction that will also have additional, perhaps unintended positive consequences. The new SHSAT, like the popular standardized exam for college admissions, the SAT, has recently changed. In both cases, the new exam is more closely aligned with the common core standards and includes a math and ELA exam. The ELA exam includes a reading section and sections on writing and language skills. The new SHSAT answer formats have changed to four multiple choice answers and grid-in answers for certain math questions exactly like the SAT and PSAT. The parallels between the exams are astounding, and we suspect the SHSAT will continue to change to include literary passages, paired passages, and other formats currently on the SAT but not yet available on the SHSAT. We believe the benefits of this change will extend beyond a better SHSAT to help NYC students also become better prepared for the PSAT and SAT. There is a strong correlation between performance on middle school standardized math and ELA exams and SHSAT performance. Likewise, we suspect a similar relationship can extend from high school to college admission exams. The new SHSAT exam, with the correct focus in training, is an obvious foundation to potentially improved performance on college admission exams. That is why we have designed this course to get students both ready for the SHSAT and to build a solid framework for success on the PSAT and SAT. We think the new SHSAT could become a standard that has ramifications beyond just New York City. This course may be a unique approach to the SHSAT, but it is also a time-proven strategy for college admission exams that should benefit 6th to 9th-grade students everywhere.

 Task-Based Goals

Whether you are an NYC student preparing for specialized high school admission or a middle school student looking to get “smarter” about the PSAT and SAT, it is important to set goals. All too often students study the “dumb way.” They buy a book and read it cover to cover or take practice test after practice test and do not improve. They’re usually surprised, but we aren’t. These methods alone are not efficient ways to improve scores without something extra. Students will make more effective gains if they to learn how to think like the test and put a lot of effort into identifying and correcting their own weaknesses. The good news is any student can do it! In fact, if you can read American English reasonably well you can succeed on the SHSAT reading section and ultimately PSAT and SAT reading as well. Throw out any private thoughts like, “I know I am not smart. I never was good at English!” Your score on the SHSAT reading exam is a reflection of how hard you work and how smartly you study.

The most popular way to set goals is usually to target a particular score, but it is not the training approach we suggest. Admission to a specialized high school, for example, generally requires getting 2 out of 3 questions correct — more than 8 out of 10 for a school like Stuyvesant. It is an easy exercise for any student to calculate how close she is to that goal. For 37 reading questions that benchmark is about 25 correct answers and a score of 20 out of 37 would suggest the student needs to answer five more questions correctly to reach the cut-off threshold on reading. Of course, the cut-off is determined by the total score, not just one exam section. We prefer to focus on the skill-based goals rather than score. A score is a useful benchmark, but improvement requires students learn the skills covered in this course and focus on analyzing their results. In practice, we suggest task-based goals like the following which will drive to the core of each student’s understanding of the exam:

“I want to identify every wrong answer on the questions in this reading passage.”

“I want to get a perfect score on inference reading questions, which are a trouble area.”

“I want to get an entire section correct where I know all the meanings of words.”

  This approach is different than stating, “My goal is to get 25 out of 37 in the reading section.” Typically, students need to get a general grasp of the test mechanics outlined in the course. Recall, the SHSAT reading exam is designed in a specific way to repeatedly ask questions in weird, detailed ways often to trick test takers. Once students feel more confident about the mechanics of the test design, then it is essential to analyze their own mistakes in detail to understand why they made the mistakes. The goal is not merely to identify the mistake after the fact but understand why it happened and what can be done next time to avoid similar mistakes. The faster students excel at tasks related to the test design and their weaknesses, the more likely they are to improve scores efficiently. A good score is more a reflection of accuracy and attention to detail than IQ which means — and this is the good news — anyone can learn to succeed on the SHSAT. 

When to Begin Preparation

The time required to prepare varies dramatically from student to student. For example, a student who knows the subject material from years of honor courses and is familiar with the SHSAT will require relatively less time – perhaps weeks or in rare cases even days – to prepare. The student who has not had access to accelerated or honor courses from elementary school onward may have to make up for a deficit of skills. Proper preparation could take a year or more to build the necessary fundamentals. In our opinion, the best indicator of which extreme you are closer to depends on whether you have experience in algebra and geometry or not. Have you already taken algebra and geometry classes in school? Are you comfortable with both topics and able to recognize the typical beginner mistakes in each topic? If the answer is yes, then you are in good shape to get ready during the summer and fall before the exam. If you have not yet taken both algebra and geometry or expect to do so during the fall period of the exam, extra preparation time is recommended – even an extended course of six months or longer. Make sure to give yourself ample time to do your best on the exam, and plan early as much as possible. Students will need to know the skills and course material covered on the exam, gain familiarity with the SHSAT format and design, and then practice, practice, practice. Success follows from hard work.

TIP:

If you think it is nearly impossible to get a score high enough to gain entry to a specialized high school, try thinking about the cut-off target—approximately 2 out of 3 questions correct—in the following way. Students who identify the easy half of the questions on the exam, the low hanging fruit, and answer those with confidence can guess randomly on the rest of the exam. Their expected score will be right at or slightly above the needed score for specialized high school admission. Can you set a target goal of being able to answer half the questions on the exam correctly with confidence? If so, you are a potential candidate for a specialized high school!