New York City Public Schools recently released new data regarding fall 2026 admissions, revealing a shockingly low representation of Black students admitted to New York’s most prestigious public high schools.
For the Fall 2026 semester, 26,123 eighth-grade students took the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT), the sole factor to determine admissions to New York City’s eight specialized high schools. Of these test-takers, 4,504 were Black students, representing 17.2 percent of all students seeking admission to a specialized school. However, only 140 of those Black students received an offer, representing just 3.5 percent of all offers for this admissions cycle. This is the second-lowest share of admissions offers of any racial group after Native American students, who were only 0.4 percent of total offers.
Among the 140 Black students who did receive an offer to attend a specialized high school, only one received an offer for Staten Island Technical High School, three received an offer for Stuyvesant High School, and six received an offer for the High School for Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at City College. Brooklyn Technical High School, the Bronx High School of Science, and the Brooklyn Latin School extended the most offers to Black students (49, 30, and 27, respectively). The High School for American Studies at Lehman College extended offers to 13 Black students and the Queens High School for the Sciences at York College extended offers to 11 Black students.
Despite extending the second-lowest amount of offers to Black students, Stuyvesant High School extended the second-highest total number of offers overall (777). Thus, Black students were just 0.39 percent of all offers to Stuyvesant, which is often considered one of the most prestigious public high schools in the country.
