A few articles have come out about the SHSAT’s scoring quirks. Many people saw this New York Times article from 2005. Test Prep SHSAT has a good breakdown of the scoring as well.
What both articles boil down to is this: as you get closer to a perfect raw score on one section, you get more points per question. The difference between getting 49 raw points or 50 raw points on a section may even be worth up to 50 scaled points on the test (out of 800)! The rewards really kick in once you are getting over 40 points on a section.
What does this mean practically? Well, my advice to most students is still to do your best on both sections and try to complete both, as counting on a close-to-perfect score in either section does not provide much margin for error. Continue reading