Hunter College High School Entrance Exam
Earn your seat at one of America’s most prestigious high schools!
Hunter College High School Entrance Exam
Earn your seat at one of America’s most prestigious high schools!
Hunter College High School (HCHS) is known for its rigorous academic standards and selective admissions process. Each year, graduates from Hunter are sent to Ivy League schools and top universities across the country. Will your student be taking the HCHS Entrance Exam in January? Read up on the test to help your student study with ease and confidence!
About the HCHS Entrance Exam
The HCHS Entrance Exam is an in-house admissions test given to 6th grade students applying for 7th grade admissions to Hunter College High School. The exam consists of two multiple-choice sections that cover Reading Comprehension and Math, along with a writing assignment.
Students are only permitted to take the HCHS once, which means it’s vital for them to ace it on their first attempt. Our tutors have the expertise and experience to help your child reach their potential and be best prepared for the big day.
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Testing Date & Eligibility
The registration and test-administration for the HCHS entrance exam is handled by Hunter College High School. Students must reside in New York City and meet the qualifying scores on their 5th grade NYS English Language Arts (ELA) and Mathematics Tests to be eligible to sit for the exam. The qualifying scores change year-to-year. For the 2024 HCHS Entrance Exam, the scores were as follows:
- NYS English Language Arts = 479 or above
- NYS Mathematics = 492 or above
If your child did not take the NYS exams, alternate qualifying criteria can be found here. Students that meet the qualification criteria will receive a letter from the DOE that they are eligible to sit for the exam, which will direct them to the HCHS admissions application form. The HCHS entrance exam is typically held in January of 6th grade with offers of admission emailed out in late May.
Test Format & Content
The HCHS is a 3 hour exam containing 3 sections: Critical Reading, which contains 50 Reading Comprehension multiple-choice questions, Mathematics, which contains 30 Mathematics multiple-choice questions, and the Writing Assignment, which asks students to write an essay or produce a creative work based on a prompt provided during the exam.
Questions | Format |
50 Multiple Choice |
|
Questions | Format |
30 Multiple Choice |
|
Questions | Format |
1 Written Piece |
|
Questions | Format |
50 Multiple Choice | 5 or 6 reading passages of varying genres Each question contains 5 answer choices: A, B, C, D, or E Assesses:
|
Questions | Format |
30 Multiple Choice | Each question contains 5 answer choices: A, B, C, D, or E Students are not permitted to use Calculators on the HCHS Entrance Exam. Assesses: Number Sense
Geometry.
Fractions/Decimals/Percents Ratios/Proportions Pattern Recognition Probability. |
Questions | Format |
1 Written Piece | Either an essay or creative piece in response to a given prompt Up to 2 pages in length Assesses:
|
Private HCHS Exam Tutoring
The HCHS Entrance Exam is a long, competitive, and challenging exam that takes a lot of preparation and practice. In the Critical Reading section, students are required to demonstrate their ability to understand, interpret, and analyze a series of texts. For Mathematics, students must accurately and carefully execute complex math problems in a limited time.
Every student tests differently. Having a trusted company such as The Tutorverse to guide your student through their individual process is invaluable!
The key to beginning your test prep journey is deciding on goals; what target score do you need to reach to get into HCHS? What areas are your strongest? What areas do you need to work on?
Once you've got an idea of where you're aiming, work with your tutor to develop a detailed and consistent plan of study. You've got your goals; how are you going to reach them?
This is the fun part—time to start studying! Work through your plan with a tutor and trusted adult, and when you're ready, take a practice test! See how you do and begin the process again. With this structure, the sky's the limit for your HCHS score!
The key to beginning your test prep journey is deciding on goals; what target score do you need to reach to get into HCHS? What areas are your strongest? What areas do you need to work on?
Once you've got an idea of where you're aiming, work with your tutor to develop a detailed and consistent plan of study. You've got your goals; how are you going to reach them?
This is the fun part—time to start studying! Work through your plan with a tutor and trusted adult, and when you're ready, take a practice test! See how you do and begin the process again. With this structure, the sky's the limit for your HCHS score!
With the HCHS Exam, some students may have already had some experience in the form of practice tests; most, though, have not. Taking a test without any initial instruction can be disheartening for students. Instead, we recommend that students have a few meetings with a tutor before taking a diagnostic. This allows families to more meaningfully decide a course of action tailored towards students’ specific skills, knowledge, and abilities before the student begins testing.
We have experienced tutors, teachers, mentors, and consultants who can evaluate your student’s needs to execute a plan that’ll make the best use of the limited time available before your student’s test date. Let us help your student navigate this daunting path forward and emerge victorious!
Pacing & Strategy on the HCHS Entrance Exam
Students have 3 hours to work through the exam in any order. Through proper preparation, each student will develop and hone their unique test-taking strategy.
However, there are a few key strategies for all students to keep in mind:
Practice active reading habits
Read with your pencil out! As you read questions, feel free to make notes in your test booklet.
Some students are reluctant to annotate because they think it takes too long. However, the time it saves you from having to return to the text is worth it in the end. Besides: by the time you finish reading a question, your notes may already contain the answer!
Don’t get stuck on any one question
On average, students can only really spend between one minute twenty seconds and one minute fifty seconds per question (allotting at least thirty minutes for the Writing Assignment).
Practice strategies to manage time. One such strategy is to skip questions and come back to them later, if you struggle to answer them! Within the same module, skipping a question won’t affect the difficulty of subsequent questions; just make sure you return to them before time runs out!
Fill in an answer for every question
There is no penalty for incorrectly answered questions. So, when your time for the test is up, you should leave no questions unanswered; save time to guess, if you have to!
If you can narrow down multiple choice questions to two answer choices, you’ll have a 50-50 chance at a earning a point!
Use all of the allotted time
Think you’re done early? No way! It’s extremely difficult for students to answer every question on the HCHS Exam correctly!
Use any extra time to check your work. Or, revisit those really tricky questions. Practice strategies to organize your scratch paper to help you with this. Learn how to double check your arithmetic!
Scoring and Student Selection
The Reading Comprehension and Mathematics multiple-choice sections will be scored first. Soon after, a cut-off score will be established by the school which is based on the overall performance of all the applicants. The cut-off score varies each year and is not shared by HCHS. The unofficial cut-off for the exam is assumed to be between 65% to 70%. Only students that meet the cut-off score will have their essays read by the graders. A percentage of students with stronger essays will be offered a seat for 7th-grade admissions to HCHS.
Interested in Learning More?
Every year, The Tutorverse helps students earn seats in prestigious schools like Hunter.
Contact us for more information on how your student can best prepare for this test and others like it!
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