NYC's specialized high schools

What "specialized high school" actually means

The nine NYC specialized high schools are public high schools that admit students through a single competitive standard, rather than through the broader NYC high school choice system. For eight of them, that standard is the SHSAT — a single test administered each fall, scored on a 200–800 composite scale, where each school sets a cutoff and admits the top-scoring students who ranked it.

The ninth school, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, predates the SHSAT-based system and admits students by audition. LaGuardia is grouped with the specialized high schools because of its prestige and historic position in NYC, but the admissions process is entirely different from the eight SHSAT-based schools.

The specialized high schools are distinct from selective screened schools in other respects too. Once admitted, students attend a public school with no tuition, with admission depending on a single number rather than a portfolio of grades, recommendations, interviews, and essays. The SHSAT is — by design and by law — the single criterion. The intent is that talent and effort determine admission rather than family resources for application coaching, private school feeder advantages, or other proxies for socioeconomic status. Whether that intent is fully achieved in practice is debated, but the structural simplicity of "one test, one number" is the system's defining feature.

How to use these school pages

Each of the nine school cards below links to a complete profile page covering that school's history, cutoff trends, programs, alumni, and how it differs from the others. The school pages are written to help families make informed decisions about which schools to rank on their MySchools application — not just which school is "best" in some abstract sense, but which school fits a specific student’s strengths, interests, and constraints.

For comparison reading, our most popular comparison pages are Stuyvesant vs Bronx Science and Stuyvesant vs Brooklyn Tech — both decisions that come up frequently for high-scoring applicants.

How the schools actually differ

From the cutoff numbers alone, it's easy to assume specialized high schools form a simple "best-to-worst" ranking. They don't. The cutoffs reflect demand and seat counts, not absolute quality. Each school has a different character that makes it the right or wrong fit for different students.

By size

Brooklyn Tech is the largest (~5,800 students total), followed by Stuyvesant (~3,370), Bronx Science (~3,000), Staten Island Tech (~1,310), Brooklyn Latin (~700), HSAS Lehman (~620), HSMSE at City (~480), and Queens Sciences (~460). A student's experience at a 5,800-person school is fundamentally different from their experience at a 460-person school.

By focus

STEM-broad: Stuyvesant. STEM-research: Bronx Science. STEM-majors: Brooklyn Tech. STEM-small: HSMSE, Queens Sciences, Staten Island Tech. Humanities: HSAS Lehman, Brooklyn Latin. Arts: LaGuardia. These are simplifications — every school offers a full curriculum across subjects — but the centers of gravity are different.

By age

Stuyvesant (1904) and Bronx Science (1938) are the oldest, with deep alumni networks and established reputations. Brooklyn Tech (1922) is similar in vintage. Staten Island Tech (1988) and the post-2002 schools (Brooklyn Latin, HSAS, HSMSE, Queens Sciences) are newer, with younger alumni bases but often more focused academic programs.

By geography

Commute can be the single most important factor for a 14-year-old's daily life. Manhattan and central Brooklyn locations (Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech, HSMSE) are well-served by subway from every borough. Outer-borough locations (Bronx Science, HSAS, Staten Island Tech, Queens Sciences) reduce commute for students in those boroughs but extend it for students elsewhere.