Which NYC Middle Schools Send the Most Students to Specialized High Schools? (2025 Official Data)
The NYC Department of Education released the 2025 SHSAT admissions data, and we analyzed every number. The results reveal a striking concentration: a small number of middle schools produce the vast majority of specialized high school offers, while hundreds of schools produce almost none.
Here are the headline numbers: 25,933 students tested, 4,023 received offers, and 785 earned Discovery program invitations. That is a 15.5% overall acceptance rate. But the school-by-school data tells a much more nuanced story about which students are getting in and where they are coming from.
Which Middle Schools Produced the Most SHSAT Offers in 2025?
The top 20 feeder schools by total offers tell a clear story. A handful of schools in South Brooklyn, Central Queens, and Lower Manhattan dominate the results.
| Rank | School | District | Testers | Offers | Conversion Rate | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | 1 | J.H.S. 201 The Madeleine Brennan School | D20 | 359 | 113 | 31.5% | | 2 | The Christa McAuliffe School / I.S. 187 | D20 | 263 | 103 | 39.2% | | 3 | Mark Twain I.S. 239 (Gifted & Talented) | D21 | 303 | 92 | 30.4% | | 4 | J.H.S. 054 Booker T. Washington | D3 | 172 | 88 | 51.2% | | 5 | J.H.S. 074 Nathaniel Hawthorne | D26 | 224 | 84 | 37.5% | | 6 | J.H.S. 259 William McKinley | D20 | 368 | 82 | 22.3% | | 7 | J.H.S. 216 George J. Ryan | D26 | 301 | 76 | 25.2% | | 8 | J.H.S. 185 Edward Bleeker | D25 | 269 | 73 | 27.1% | | 9 | J.H.S. 067 Louis Pasteur | D26 | 218 | 72 | 33.0% | | 10 | NEST+m (New Explorations into Science, Technology and Math) | D1 | 99 | 71 | 71.7% | | 11 | NYC Lab Middle School for Collaborative Studies | D2 | 149 | 70 | 47.0% | | 12 | I.S. 98 Bay Academy | D21 | 328 | 69 | 21.0% | | 13 | J.H.S. 157 Stephen A. Halsey | D28 | 210 | 62 | 29.5% | | 14 | M.S. 158 Marie Curie | D26 | 142 | 56 | 39.4% | | 15 | J.H.S. 167 Robert F. Wagner | D2 | 175 | 55 | 31.4% | | 16 | J.H.S. 104 Simon Baruch | D2 | 191 | 54 | 28.3% | | 17 | East Side Middle School | D2 | 104 | 47 | 45.2% | | 18 | J.H.S. 220 John J. Pershing | D20 | 210 | 45 | 21.4% | | 19 | The Anderson School | D3 | 57 | 44 | 77.2% | | 20 | J.H.S. 190 Russell Sage | D28 | 130 | 44 | 33.8% |
J.H.S. 201 leads the city with 113 offers from 359 testers, a 31.5% conversion rate. But raw offer counts do not tell the full story. The conversion rate reveals which schools are most effective at preparing students for the test.
Which Schools Have the Highest Conversion Rates?
When you sort by the percentage of testers who received offers, a different picture emerges. Smaller, selective schools dominate:
The Anderson School (D3): 77.2% conversion rate. Out of 57 testers, 44 received offers. This Upper West Side gifted-and-talented school has the highest conversion rate in the city by a significant margin.
NEST+m (D1): 71.7% conversion rate. Out of 99 testers, 71 received offers. Located in the Lower East Side, NEST+m is another selective school with extraordinary SHSAT results.
TAG Young Scholars (D4): 60.0% conversion rate. All 60 eligible students tested, and 36 received offers.
J.H.S. 054 Booker T. Washington (D3): 51.2% conversion rate. This Upper West Side school sent 88 students to specialized high schools from 172 testers.
NYC Lab Middle School (D2): 47.0% conversion rate. Located in Chelsea, 70 out of 149 testers received offers.
These conversion rates are striking. At The Anderson School, more than 3 out of every 4 students who take the SHSAT receive an offer. At the citywide average, the rate is just 1 in 6.5.
How Concentrated Are the Results?
Here is the number that should concern every NYC education policymaker: only 116 out of 676 middle schools (17.2%) produced a countable number of SHSAT offers in 2025. The DOE suppresses counts below 5 for privacy, so "countable" means 5 or more offers.
That means 560 middle schools - 82.8% of all schools with eligible students - sent fewer than 5 students each to specialized high schools. Many sent zero.
The top 20 schools alone produced roughly 1,323 offers, about one-third of all offers citywide, from a fraction of the total schools. The top 5 schools produced 480 offers from just 1,321 testers.
This concentration is not random. It maps directly to geography, demographics, and school resources.
What Does the District Breakdown Reveal?
School districts tell the geographic story of SHSAT admissions. The contrast between top-performing and bottom-performing districts is stark:
Top Districts by Total Offers
| District | Borough | Offers | Key Schools | |---|---|---|---| | D2 | Manhattan (Midtown/Downtown) | 517 | Lab MS, Wagner, Baruch, East Side | | D20 | Brooklyn (Sunset Park/Bay Ridge) | 473 | J.H.S. 201, I.S. 187, McKinley, Pershing | | D26 | Queens (Bayside/Fresh Meadows) | 421 | Hawthorne, Ryan, Pasteur, Marie Curie | | D15 | Brooklyn (Park Slope/Carroll Gardens) | 259 | New Voices, M.S. 51 | | D31 | Staten Island | 242 | Multiple schools | | D22 | Brooklyn (Flatbush/Marine Park) | 197 | Multiple schools | | D25 | Queens (Flushing) | 195 | Bleeker, I.S. 237, Adrien Block |
Bottom Districts by Total Offers
| District | Borough | Offers | |---|---|---| | D23 | Brooklyn (Brownsville) | 4 | | D18 | Brooklyn (East Flatbush/Canarsie) | 8 | | D9 | Bronx (South Bronx) | 9 | | D12 | Bronx (Central Bronx) | 11 | | D7 | Bronx (South Bronx) | 14 | | D32 | Brooklyn (Bushwick) | 16 |
District 2 in Manhattan produced 517 offers. District 23 in Brownsville produced 4. That is a 129-to-1 ratio between the top and bottom districts.
What Is the Geographic Pattern?
The data draws a clear geographic line across the city:
High-performing areas: South Brooklyn (Districts 20, 21, 22), Central Queens (Districts 26, 25, 28), Lower Manhattan (District 2), and Upper West Side (District 3). These areas collectively account for the majority of SHSAT offers.
Low-performing areas: The Bronx (Districts 7, 9, 12 combined for 34 offers), East Brooklyn (Districts 18, 23, 32 combined for 28 offers), and Central Brooklyn (District 16, 17). These areas are nearly absent from the specialized high school pipeline.
Staten Island (D31) is a notable outlier: it produces a solid 242 offers despite being geographically isolated, likely driven by the presence of Staten Island Technical High School as a local option.
How Do Offers Break Down by Ethnicity?
The demographic data reveals significant disparities in SHSAT outcomes:
Offers by School and Ethnicity
| School | Total | Asian | Black | Hispanic | White | Other | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | Stuyvesant | 781 | 509 | 8 | 27 | 142 | 95 | | Bronx Science | 738 | 422 | 21 | 55 | 155 | 85 | | Brooklyn Tech | 1,403 | 691 | 51 | 102 | 422 | 137 | | Brooklyn Latin | 350 | 128 | 18 | 45 | 116 | 43 | | HSMSE | 182 | 61 | 9 | 19 | 74 | 19 | | American Studies | 132 | 33 | 6 | 18 | 47 | 28 | | Queens Science | 148 | 117 | 6 | 6 | 8 | 11 | | SI Tech | 289 | 192 | 1 | 5 | 78 | 13 |
Brooklyn Tech is by far the largest specialized high school with 1,403 offers, and it has the most diverse incoming class in absolute numbers. Stuyvesant's 781 offers include 509 Asian students (65.2%) and 8 Black students (1.0%).
Acceptance Rates by Ethnicity
| Ethnicity | Testers | Offers | Acceptance Rate | |---|---|---|---| | Asian | 8,401 | 2,153 | 25.6% | | White | 4,478 | 1,042 | 23.3% | | Hispanic | 6,760 | 277 | 4.1% | | Black | 4,764 | 120 | 2.5% | | Multiracial | 697 | 217 | 31.1% |
Asian students have a 25.6% acceptance rate. Black students have a 2.5% acceptance rate. This 10-to-1 ratio has been consistent across multiple years and remains one of the most debated aspects of the specialized high school admissions process.
What Is the Discovery Program?
The Discovery program provides an alternative pathway to specialized high schools for students who score just below the cutoff and come from disadvantaged backgrounds. In 2025, 785 Discovery invitations were extended:
| Ethnicity | Discovery Invitations | |---|---| | Asian | 497 | | Hispanic | 120 | | Black | 90 | | White | 63 | | Other | 15 |
Discovery invitations require students to complete a summer program before enrolling. The program expands access, though critics note that Asian students - who already have the highest acceptance rate on the standard exam - also receive the most Discovery invitations, largely because Discovery is based on economic disadvantage and school characteristics rather than race.
Does Your Middle School Determine Your SHSAT Outcome?
Looking at the data, it is tempting to conclude that attending a top feeder school is the key to getting into a specialized high school. But that conclusion misses an important nuance.
The top feeder schools share several characteristics: they tend to be screened or gifted-and-talented programs, they are located in districts with strong academic resources, and their student populations skew toward families who invest heavily in test preparation.
But the SHSAT itself does not care which middle school you attend. It is a standardized test. A student from J.H.S. 201 and a student from a school in District 23 take the same exam and are scored identically. The test does not know or account for your school, your district, or your background.
What the feeder school data really measures is preparation access and culture. Schools with high conversion rates tend to have students who start SHSAT prep earlier, have access to tutoring or prep programs, and are surrounded by peers who are also preparing. The school itself does not make students score higher. The preparation ecosystem around those schools does.
This means a student at any middle school in the city can earn an offer to a specialized high school, if they prepare with the same rigor and access to quality materials. The test is blind to everything except your answers.
What Does This Data Mean for Your Family?
If your child attends one of the top feeder schools, the environment and peer group are working in their favor. Use that advantage, but do not rely on it. Plenty of students at top feeders still do not receive offers.
If your child attends a school that sends few or no students to specialized high schools, the data is clear: the barrier is preparation access, not ability. Students from low-offer schools who prepare thoroughly can and do earn offers. The test does not discriminate by school of origin.
Here is what we recommend regardless of which school your child attends:
- Start early. Begin SHSAT preparation at least 6 months before the test. Twelve months is better.
- Use quality materials. Generic math worksheets are not enough. Practice with questions designed to match the actual SHSAT format and difficulty.
- Take full-length practice tests. The 180-minute, 114-question format requires stamina that can only be built through realistic simulation.
- Focus on weak areas. Diagnostic data from practice tests reveals exactly where to invest study time.
- Build consistency. Thirty minutes of daily practice beats a 5-hour weekend cram session.
The 2025 data shows that 4,023 students earned offers from 25,933 testers. Your child can be one of them, regardless of their middle school, if they put in the right preparation.
Start today with SHS Prep's 3,000+ practice questions and 10 full-length mock exams. Every question is calibrated to the real SHSAT, and the platform tracks progress by topic so you always know where to focus next.
Quick Reference: 2025 SHSAT Admissions at a Glance
| Metric | Number | |---|---| | Total testers | 25,933 | | Total offers | 4,023 | | Overall acceptance rate | 15.5% | | Discovery invitations | 785 | | Schools with 5+ offers | 116 of 676 (17.2%) | | Top feeder school | J.H.S. 201 (113 offers) | | Highest conversion rate | The Anderson School (77.2%) | | Top district | D2 (517 offers) | | Bottom district | D23 (4 offers) | | Largest school by offers | Brooklyn Tech (1,403) | | Most selective school | Stuyvesant (cutoff: 556) |
Data source: NYC Department of Education, 2025 Specialized High School Admissions Report.
