On Wednesday 1/27/2021, my daughter will sit for the SHSAT. This is a 114-question math and english test, used by the 8 specialized New York City high schools as the sole determinant of admittance. All other factors you’d think might play a role – grades, teacher recommendations, attendance, extracurricular activities, financial need – are ignored. We’ve been preparing in earnest since last August. This blog post recaps the highlights of our experience, and tries to answer a few common questions parents might have.

• What does my kid need to be good at?

• My advice to parents for ELA prep

• How I prepared my daughter

• Sample test content we used

• What is the SHSAT?

• What are the specialized schools like?

• Are the schools diverse?

• How to get sample SHSAT test content

• The importance of Schoolwork

What is the SHSAT?

The SHSAT is a three hour standardized test, designed by Pearson, and is comprised of two sections: math and english.

• It’s the only criterion used for admissions into one of the 8 specialized New York City high schools (which is nuts)

• It’s only used in New York City, reminding everyone yet again, that New Yorkers move at a different operational tempo; one that is sometimes too hard to explain to others

• Over 30,000 8th graders per year take it across the 5 boroughs, kids get 1 chance to take it, and there are no do-overs

What are the specialized schools like?

They are all really hard to get into, and operate like feeder schools into the ivy league. Laguardia, because it’s a performing arts-focused school, doesn’t require the SHSAT. But it does require an in-person audition and/or portfolio submission.

Generally speaking, if you’re unfamiliar with the ins-and-outs of New York City’s education system, you can think of the specialized schools like public school versions of Hogwarts where…

• Stuyvesant is like Gryffindor

• Brooklyn Tech is like Hufflepuff

• Bronx Science is like Ravenclaw

Are the Schools racially diverse?

No. Black and brown students are overwhelmingly underrepresented. As expected, kids from well-to-do families have a built-in advantage. See the numbers yourself. 👉🏽
More info here.

How to get sample SHSAT test content

Downloadable pdf’s of old versions of the SHSAT are made available on the New York City department of education’s web site – right here on this page (direct pdf link is here). The official sample content does a good job of providing a snapshot of the skills being assessed, the range of the content, difficulty level, and the degree of ambiguity you can expect with open-to-interpretation kinds of questions commonly found in the ELA portion of test.

The Importance of Schoolwork

For a moment, think of your kid’s test-taking success using this analogy: their odds of surviving a random assault in a desolate location – for example: around Port Authority at 9pm on a Thursday. Obviously, most 13 year olds aren’t professional cage fighters, so the single greatest predictor of success in this hypothetical scenario is base fitness level – eg: strength, speed, stamina, endurance; not to mention composure under duress. Think about it: when someone charges at you in a blind rage, you can’t hop into a time machine and sign up for a gym membership. Fitness is either there already, or it’s not. People who are fit have earned it over a long stretch of time, as a result of good habits.

Likewise, your kid’s ability to succeed at any proctored test (like the SHSAT) will largely be determined by their base level of academic preparation – eg: their proven ability to grind out homework day in and day out; of doing the unglamorous work of showing up to class and turning in assignments on time.

My daughter is fortunate. She attends a middle school with a strong focus on STEM, where kids are expected to be doing algebra in the 6th grade. Her reference group is composed of high achieving students. Parents and teachers expect a heavy workload that emphasizes repetitive skill-based drills. As a result of doing this kind of work 👇 – aka: “repping it out” in sports lexicon – kids are doing 2-variable parametric equations and introductory polynomials by the 8th grade.

Bottom line – if your kid doesn’t do his/her school work, but expects to do well on a test like the SHSAT, it’s a lot like an obese person expecting to get “ripped” without curbing their donut intake. Not really a goal, more like a wish.

What does my kid need to be good at to succeed?

ELA

• Ability to identify the main concept(s) from a reading passage, and mentally summarize on the fly

• Recognizing and understanding common literary techniques: foreshadowing, insinuation, symbolism, allegory, metaphor

• Understanding the importance of author’s intent, and the role it plays in interpreting texts – eg: what is this person trying to communicate to me? why?

• Bonus – possessing enough cultural literacy to understand that textual interpretation hinges on unconventional literary techniques; like irony and hyperbole

• Tips:

  • Have your kid read – real books, newspapers, and magazines – for example, the CIA World Fact Book has a ton of great introductions < 1,000 words long, many of which are exceptional examples of clear purposeful writing and summarization techniques

  • Level up your chitchat – figure out how to translate highfalutin concepts from art, literature, philosophy, history, math, and science into conversations about things your kid cares about: tiktok, sports, pokemon, youtube stars, super heroes, etc.

Math

• Basic arithmetic and multiplication tables up to 16 x 16

• Understanding order of operations (aka: Pemdas), GCF, and prime numbers

• Converting statements into math expressions, deciphering a word problem, and figuring out what is being asked

• Basic geometric concepts like complementary/supplementary angles, similar triangles, and how to use the Pythagorean theorem

• Perimeter/circumference, and area calculations for common 2-D shapes like rectangles, triangles, circles, and parallelograms

• Mean, median, and mode

• Basic set theory applications in computed probabilities

My advice to Parents for ELA Prep

🔥ELA is a dumpster fire. Full stop. Accept that, and do your best to optimize. If you’re rich enough to afford a manny + a nanny, just get a tutor – preferably one who reads like they’re fluent in the classics, but thinks like an engineer. If you’re not loaded, do this:

• Take the ELA test yourself – completely, and under the same time constraint that your kid will face – then grade your responses

• Home in on the low-hanging fruit such as the grammatical revisions section. There is no reason you cannot easily prepare a kid for rote, mechanical language skills like accurately identifying subject/verb agreement. Get a sense of what those skills are, and get good at them

• Figure out why your answers diverge from theirs – carefully read through Pearson’s justifications for all the answers you got wrong; you will likely be amazed by the obtuseness of their reasoning; also by the flagrant stupidity of selecting works of satire for a test that putatively measures 13 year olds’ ability to comprehend texts. Does an 8th grader really have a good enough understanding of irony to understand Mark Twain’s intent when he opines about the stupidity of ants in a Tramp Abroad? Call me crazy, but I don’t think anyone under the age of 30 really understands what the fuck irony is.

• Leverage all of your anger from doing the above 3 things constructively: namely, calibrate your own Pearson ELA “kentucky windage” bullshit compensators with the goal of enumerating a set of steps that you can communicate to your kid in order to achieve these objectives:

  • Eliminate red herrings right away

  • Narrow down an answer to 2 plausible options

• Encourage your kid to read a LOT. Here’s what my daughter reads:

  • joke books, comic books, Harry Potter novels, sci fi and fantasy, some really bad fiction

  • The New York Times, the Washington Post, National Geographic

• Connect unobvious word play activities with language development

  • crossword puzzles, word scrambles, scrabble

  • Tik Tok lip synching (I’m serious)

  • Listening to Rap and/or reading poetry

How I prepared my daughter

When she was in the 7th grade, I started gathering pdf sample tests, and ordered a few SHSAT prep books. In the beginning, my approach was totally haphazard and improvised. SHSAT books can be very helpful, but relying on books without having a system is the biggest mistake you can make. You have to buckle down and get methodical. Below is a summary of what we did.

I tagged and built up a database of test content

Using the SHSAT sample tests as a starting point, I input all of the questions into a database. Then, I tagged each question with descriptive terms like:

• area-perimeter-volume

• data-analysis

• decimals-to-fractions

• equations

• fractions

• geometry

• etc…

I developed more content, customized to my daughter’s needs

After initially entering a small set of questions, and familiarizing myself with the essential rubrics (eg: tags), I developed my own content, using these basic problem characteristics:

• No images

• Easily translatable into templates, making it possible to programmatically generate hundreds of permutations

• Have high frequency in the test AND constitute a source of known weakness

For problems that were more time-consuming, I took the time to create sample videos and detailed explanations of the solutions. I did this on a limited basis, only if there was value there.

I gave regular assessments & constantly revised our preparation based on the results

Once a week, we’d squeeze in either a mini (20’ish questions) to a full-blown math+ela test (114 questions). The critical thing was to measure the outcome so that the following week could be planned. Why? So that my daughter could spend her time shoring up her weaknesses; not getting good at things she’s already excellent at. Here’s what we did:

• After each weekly assessment, I recorded all of the following:

  • The date of the assessment

  • Total number of questions: eg: 47

  • Final score: eg: 42/57

  • For each question answered wrong on the assessment, I recorded my daughter’s perceived difficulty rating (1-5 scale) – my goal was to drive this number down over time (on average)

  • I looked at all the wrong answers grouped by tag, and by difficulty rating – to get a good idea of how the following week’s worth of preparation should be structured

  • I identified areas of focus: things like: percents and equations

• During the following week, we drilled only the areas of focus:

  • Each night, we did between 5 and 20 problems, around a single area of focus. For example, a lot of kids have difficulty making sense of expressions that have to do with percents (eg: % of something, % increase/decrease, % faster/slower, etc)

    • A rectangular field had a length of 80 meters and a width of 50 meters. The field was recently enlarged, with the length increased by 15% and the width increased by 10 meters. By what percentage was the area of the field increased?

  • Each night, I printed a 1-sheet (sometimes 2 sheets) of problems – about 10 minutes of work

  • We’d talk through the problems afterwards, and I did my best to keep things relaxed and low-stress: to reinforce the idea that this stuff is super easy

• Fully-masked tests to avoid any surprises like…

  • The strap around my ears is super itchy after 45 minutes

  • My nose gets runny, and I have a hard time diagramming!

  • etc…

We examined our progress, made adjustments as needed, and celebrated success

It was important to constantly remind my daughter that every bit of work she did was equivalent to making a small deposit into a savings account; that those efforts would one day render a huge cumulative advantage on the day of the test, like finally getting to make a withdrawal from that savings account. Key to that idea, was demonstrating that it was in fact, already happening. I regularly showed her with the data I was collecting:

• Assessment 8/20/2020

  • Total Correct Math: 33

  • Total Correct ELA: 33

  • Raw Score: 452

  • How your score ranks with your top 3 choices:

    • Choice 1: 😢 – 15 questions away

    • Choice 2: 😢 – 6 questions away

    • Choice 3: 😢 – 5 questions away

• Assessment 10/25/2020

  • Total Correct Math: 49

  • Total Correct ELA: 42

  • Raw Score: 547

  • How your score ranks with your top 3 choices:

    • Choice 1: 😢 – 6 questions away

    • Choice 2: ✅

    • Choice 3: ✅

I built a Math app

At first, I tried doing everything with spreadsheets. This didn’t scale well, so I built a simple math helper application one weekend. At first, it started out as an SPA written in Bootstrap and Vue, with problems stored as .json files on the local file system. Lots of hand-written code and css, with tons of imperative dom manipulators. By the time I reached 100 questions, I realized I needed something a lot more robust. Below are how things evolved slowly… over time.

Version 1: Google docs

• Quick and easy to set up, which was great

• Looked like crap, and had to be fiddled with constantly

• Unwieldy and totally unscalable

Version 2: node.js

• Created in a weekend

• node.js with express (no templating)

• jQuery handling most of the layout and presentation imperatively

• Questions stored as .json files on the local file system

• Media stored locally

Version 3: node.js + Vue

• Written in node.js, using express as a backend and Pug as a templating engine

• Uses Vue, Bootstrap, and MathJax for the front-end

• Questions stored on a cloud-based Postgres database with API endpoints acting as the intermediary between the application and the database

• Access to questions and quizes now behind authentication

• Media stored on AWS

I reminded my DAUGHTER that she has got this

As a dad, I’m the founder, CEO, CTO, and CMO of my daughter’s fan club. Prior to giving her an assessment, I remind her of the inevitability of her success – in print, on top of the test booklet, using words like the ones below:

One story I love to share with my daughter is the one of how Michael Phelps integrated visualization into a daily ritual that became a centerpiece of his mental discipline. He did this at the urging of his coach, Bill Bowman, before all the gold medals. As I know the story, Bowman instructed Phelps to establish a nightly routine before bedtime, one in which he’d mentally rehearse and visually reconstruct all of the steps leading up to the perfect race. He told him to imagine it in as much detail as he could, as though he were watching a video tape. Phelps complied. He also improved as a swimmer. The routine became so ingrained, Bowman would simply have to say the words “Get the tape ready” in order to prime Phelps into the frame of mind he would use to become a world champion.

I don’t think everyone can talk themselves into becoming a gold medalist, but I’m a big believer in the power of deliberate mindful practice. And although standardized test success (SHSAT, ACT, SAT, GRE, etc) is not something that I feel has intrinsic value, the ability to summon the discipline and effort to pursue a goal in a systematic fashion is definitely a valuable competency that is transferrable to multiple domains.

We “tapered” toward the end, and budgeted in goofing off time

Just like runners prep for a marathon, I wanted to time my daughter’s preparation so that she’d peak a few weeks before the actual test. We also had “cheat days” where we sat around and watched tv. My daughter is a lot like me in that she needs a ton of sleep, so allowing her to get plenty of rest was a priority. I also made sure to let her know that her emotional well being and happiness were way more important than cramming in 30 more minutes of drills. So some nights, we just talked about math and reading. Other nights, we’d go upstairs with a bowl of chocolate chips and watch tv. Below are some of our favorite things to watch:

• The Outsider

• Raised by Wolves

• The Queen’s Gambit

• The Mandalorian

• Mr. Robot

• Wanda Vision

Sample test content we used

Below are some screenshots of question content, as it renders in the context of the app I built. Click or tap on any image to see it in greater detail.