Interpreting SHSAT Practice Test Scores

Our SHSAT practice tests are a great way to establish a benchmark, check for understanding, and gauge progress. With our testing video tool, students have an opportunity to practice under a timed setting, with many of the same prompts and reminders they would receive in an in-person practice test.

But what happens after you’ve taken the test?

Scaled Score vs. Raw Score

After taking the real SHSAT, students will receive a scaled score. This is the product of calculations performed by the Department of Education and its contractors.

The scaling process takes the raw score (the total number of questions answered correctly on each of the ELA and Math sections) and converts it to a scaled score. By doing so, the Department of Education generates a curve, and a student’s score is ranked relative to his/her peers. The process is proprietary, complex, and most importantly for our purposes, not disclosed to the public. In fact, the precise conversion from raw to scaled scores may vary slightly from year to year, depending on the particulars of that year’s testing population, exam, and administration.

Practice Test Scoring

For this reason, and because a certain number of questions are always unscored, we do not attempt to convert a raw score to a scaled score.

Instead, we provide statistical information to help families understand how a student performed relative to his/her peers. This achieves a similar goal as the scaling process conducted by the Department of Education: to rank students to each other on a relative basis.

To help families understand how their student performed compared with other students who took that test, some statistical information provide includes:

• the average raw score on the test
• the raw score range for the top 25%
  • If your student’s raw score falls within the Top 25% range, it means that your student’s score was within the top 25% of the population. This means your student scored higher than 75% of all other students.
• the raw score range for the top 25-50%
  • If your student’s raw score falls within the Top 26%-50% range, it means that your student’s score was within the top 26%-50% of the population. This means your student scored higher than 50% of all other students.

Please consult your score report or score report email for this information. Students in our private programming will receive enhanced score reporting, which will provide additional statistical information.

What’s Next?

The raw score on this test should be used as an indicator of areas of strengths and areas for growth. Before the next practice test, spend time reviewing those topics where there is room for growth. Use can also use your relative performance to help you understand which schools to prioritize in your specialized high schools ranking.

If you attend our classes or work with our tutors, we will use the results of these tests to tailor our lessons, spending time on topics/areas where the students need it most.

Remember, this test should be used for diagnostic purposes only. It does not guarantee any particular result or outcome on the actual test or admissions process.

Third-Party Scaled Score Conversions

There are many third-party websites which claim to convert raw scores to scaled scores. For your convenience, we list below a sample raw-to-scaled-score conversion table that can be found on many popular SHSAT websites.

To calculate your total scaled score, use the table to look up your raw score once for ELA and once for math. Then, add them together for your total scaled score.

For example, let’s suppose a student has a raw ELA score of 30 and a raw Math score of 50.

• Convert the ELA score: a raw score of 30 gives a scaled score of 215
• Convert the Math score: a raw score of 50 give a scaled score of 298
• Add both scaled scores together: 215 + 298 = 513

Please note that we have not vetted the information below and therefore neither endorse nor reject its accuracy.