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Admissions Criteria

 

For Students Entering High School in Fall 2026

 

 

From Townsend Harris High School:

 

Criteria for Applying to Ninth Grade

Assessment for Townsend Harris High School 

 

Please click here for the 2025-2026 Townsend Harris Admissions Assessment Questions for the essay and the video.

 

Submit the essay and video through MySchools. 

 

You can find a video tutorial that walks you through the process of submitting additional materials here.

 

All additional materials will be evaluated after the MySchools application closes on December 3.

 

IMPORTANT: Please ensure that your essay and video are submitted in an acceptable file format. You can find information on acceptable file types in the MySchools application.  

 

For our school:

  • .PDF and .DOC(NOT Google Doc) files are preferred for essays
  • .MOV and .MP4files are preferred for videos

 

There are many tutorials and free tools online to help you save your files in the correct formats. Doing this will help us ensure that we have access to reading and viewing all of the wonderful materials that you will submit. Thank you in advance for your help!

 

 

Criteria for Applying to Tenth Grade

For Fall 2026 admissions, Townsend Harris will admit the top-performing applicants from across each middle school and citywide. Students will be placed into screened admissions groups based on the average of their final eighth-grade core course grades (English Language Arts, math, science, and social studies). To be in a group, a student’s average must fall within the top percentage of students citywide or at their NYC Public school.

 

Applicants are admitted in group order, starting with Group 1. If there are more applicants in a group than available seats, offers within that group are determined by a random number assigned to each application.

 

To learn what average grades are needed to fall into a group at your child’s NYC public school, please contact your current school beginning October 7. For the average grades needed to fall into the different groups citywide for the Fall 2026 admission process please click here.

 

 

 

Townsend Harris has a Diversity in Admissions Initiative.

  • Applicants eligible for free or reduced-price lunch will be considered first for 50% of seats.
  • For the remaining 50% of seats, all students will be considered.

 

 

Update from the NYCPS Office of Student Enrollment (September 11, 2025)

 

2025-2026 Admissions Timeline (all High Schools)

  • Tuesday, October 7: High School Application, LaGuardia Application, and SHSAT Registration opens
  • Friday, October 31: SHSAT registration closes 
  • Wednesday, November 12: SHSAT School Day Administration
  • Sat, November 15 and Sun, November 16: SHSAT Weekend Administration for 8th grader
  • Sat, November 22 and Sun, November 23: SHSAT Weekend Administration for 9th grader
  • Wednesday, December 3: High School and LaGuardia applications close; deadline to submit additional materials (auditions and assessments) in MySchools. 

 

Update from the NYCPS Office of Student Enrollment (October 3, 2025)

 

Shqip /  العربية /  বাংলা / 中文 - 简体 (ZHS) /中文 - 繁體 (ZHT) /  Français / Kreyòl ayisyen /  한국어 /  Русский /  Español / Українська /  اردو  / O'zbek

Dear families,  

 

We are excited to invite you to join us for one of our upcoming virtual information sessions about high school admissions in New York City! All NYC families with eighth graders are encouraged to attend. The high school admission process will open on Tuesday, October 7, 2025.  

 

During these sessions, we will cover how to explore high schools and programs, building a balanced application, how to register for the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT), how to audition for arts programs, and how offers are made. After each presentation, we will respond to your questions. 

 

SCHEDULED DATES:  

  • Wednesday, October 8, 5pm to 6pm | High School Admissions General Event: An overview of the admissions process, from how to access your MySchools account to the best strategies for completing your application. Event held in English and interpretation provided in: Bangla, Chinese (Mandarin), French, Ukranian and American Sign Language (ASL).  
  • Thursday, October 9, 5pm to 6pm | The Testing Specialized High Schools: How to register for the SHSAT, how to prepare for the digital SHSAT, and how offers into these schools are made. Event held in English and interpretation provided in: Arabic, Bangla, Russian, Spanish and ASL.  
  • Tuesday, October 14, 6pm to 7pm | High School Admissions General Event. Event held in English and interpretation provided in: Albanian, Arabic, Haitian Creole, Urdu and ASL.  
  • Wednesday, October 15, 5pm to 6pm | High School Admissions General Event for Students with Disabilities. Event held in English and interpretation provided in: Bangla, Chinese (Mandarin), Russian, Spanish and ASL.  
  • Thursday, October 16, 5pm to 6pm | High School Admissions General Event in Spanish.  
  • Thursday, October 23, 5pm to 6pm | High Schools Admissions General Event in Chinese (Mandarin). 
  • Friday, October 24, 3pm to 4pm | High Schools Admissions General Event. Event in English. Interpretation provided in: Korean, Russian, Spanish and Uzbek.  
  • Thursday, October 30, 6pm to 7pm | The Testing Specialized High Schools. Event held in English. Interpretation available in: Chinese (Mandarin), French, Korean, Urdu and ASL.  
 

HOW TO JOIN ANY EVENT: 

  • Each event will be hosted live. Join us on Zoom at the event’s start time by clicking here https://bit.ly2025FallHSEvents 
  • Webinar ID: 990 1261 6744  
  • Passcode: 123456 or
  • For phone audio:  
  • US+ 16469313860 
  • Conference Line: 99012616744# 
  • Passcode 123456# 
 

IMPORTANT NOTE: visit schools.nyc.gov/HS  where you will find the phone numbers to call for interpretation in each language.  

 

We look forward to having you join our events and encourage you to stay connected, schools.nyc.gov/HS.  

Any questions, please email [email protected]. 

 

Best regards,  

The High School Admissions Team 

Office of Student Enrollment  

 

Be sure to sign up for our high school and/or middle school admissions mailing list at schools.nyc.gov/SignUp.