More students admitted to LaGuardia in specialized HS round

More than 6,000 eighth- and ninth-graders got good news today: offers of admission to one of the city’s nine specialized high schools.

For the 23,000 other students who took the Specialized High School Admission Test last October, the wait to find out about what school they’ll attend this fall will continue until the end of next month. They’ll find out where they’ve been accepted at the same time as the tens of thousands of eighth graders who did not try to get into one of the city’s most elite schools.

At eight city schools, including Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, admission is based on students’ scores on the ultracompetitive Specialized High Schools Admission Test, which 29,000 eighth- and ninth-graders took last October. Admission to the ninth school, LaGuardia, depends on music or art auditions and grades.

More than 100 more students were offered spots at LaGuardia this year, 1,041 compared to 936 last year. The school is graduating a larger-than-normal class this June and so extended more offers of admission than it has in the past, according to Andrew Jacob, a Department of Education spokesman.

At the other schools, the number of students accepted was about the same as last year, when the number of offers jumped by nearly 400. That increase added new seats at several schools and made sure the city’s newest specialized high school, Brooklyn Latin, had enough students accept their offers of admission to fill the freshman class.

Most of the students who got into a specialized high school today also got an offer from a non-specialized high school. Those students will spend the next few weeks making a tough but wonderful decision between two of their top-choice high schools.