What We Learned from the 2025/26 SHSAT: Students’ Perspectives

Photo by Pavel Danilyuk

November 2025 marks the first time the SHSAT was a digital test. It will change even more in 2026, but for now we wanted to hear what students had to say as the first to take the test on a computer.

What was on the 2025 SHSAT?

There were two versions of the exam this year. Students received one or the other at random. Here’s what students we spoke with reported seeing.

Math

1. Box and Whisker. Also known as box plots, these seemed to cause the most stress for students. Many reported on Reddit having not seen them before, or being confused by them.
2. Quartiles.
3. Stem and Leaf.
4. A little bit of geometry. There were not many geometry related questions this year, which is typical.
5. A lot of fractions. Students reported many fraction related questions in the math section.
6. Area of the shaded region. This tends to be a dreaded question by many students, which presents them with two shapes that overlap in some way, and then requires them to find the area of just the overlapping section (i.e. shaded region). It varies year to year whether students see these.

ELA

1. Old language poetry. Students saw a poem either about a house or snake, that used antiquated language. Many students reported this as one of the most challenging parts of the test.
2. Non-fiction text. Every year has a section with a non-fiction passage and related comprehension questions. This year’s passage was informative, rather than argumentative. This changes from year to year.
3. Pronoun reference. These types of questions ask students to determine which noun the pronoun in a sentence or paragraph refers to (sometimes referred to as antecedents). This year’s questions included some in which it was not clear which noun the pronoun was referring to (often called ambiguous pronouns).
4. Dangling Modifiers.
5. Subject-Verb Agreement (SVA).

What wasn’t on the 2025 SHSAT?

Most notably not on the 2025 SHSAT were combinations and permutations in the math section. We mention this because tutors love to teach them, and families can be billed for many many hours as this content is HARD. Our tutors do not spend extensive time on this because it often doesn’t show up; their time with students is better spent elsewhere.

How Did Students Feel?

Overall there was the typical mix of responses: some felt it was too easy, others too hard. Some used every second of the available time, and others finished in half the time allotted. We see this every year.

Specific to 2025, we saw an uptick in anxiety over how well they did. Students said the math was harder than the ELA section this year, especially as many students weren’t prepared to see Box and Whisker Plots. Some found the poetry section confusing. Parents and students alike complained that the Technical Enhanced Items (TEI) made it take longer. Students given extra time felt less stressed about these questions.

Ivy Tutors Network students we talked to personally after the exam reported feeling prepared and confident (proof that test prep can make a huge difference in test anxiety and day of performance!).

2025/2026 SHSAT Scores

Scores - and offer letters - for the 2025 SHSAT will be released on March 5, 2026. We’ll update this blog then and show you how scores compared to the 2024/2025 exam.

Overall, the move to a digital platform did not extensively change the SHSAT. Our students saw essentially what we expected them to based on past years. The 2026/2027 SHSAT will move from the “standard” test to an adaptive exam and we expect this to have a much greater impact on students. If you’ve got a son or daughter who will take the SHSAT in November 2026 or 2027, we highly encourage you to join our monthly - free - office hours where we’ll share new information on the SHSAT as we get it, as well as guidance on when to start to preparing and how to select high schools, whether public or private. Sign up here.