TACHS practice test: free questions for all four parts
The TACHS office publishes no online practice test, only a handful of sample questions in its Student Handbook. So we wrote our own, in the format the Handbook shows: answer them here, check each part, and read why every answer is right or wrong.
Test day is Friday, November 6, 2026 (Archdiocese of New York) or Saturday, November 7, 2026 (Brooklyn/Queens). All TACHS dates.
These are not official TACHS questions. Genius Prep wrote every one of them. They follow the parts and question styles described by the TACHS office, but the real test has many more questions and a clock. For the official samples, see the back of the 2026 Student Handbook (PDF).
What’s in this practice set
- Reading: 4 questions, on one literary passage
- Written Expression: 4 questions: fixing an underlined part, choosing a sentence, finding the line with a mistake, combining sentences
- Mathematics: 6 questions: percent, equations, patterns, probability, geometry and data
- Ability: 3 questions: one each of the three kinds the Handbook shows (Figure Matrices, Paper Folding, Figure Classification)
As on the real test, Reading, Written Expression and Mathematics have four answer choices and Ability has five, and the letters alternate from one question to the next (A–D, then J–M). There is no penalty for a wrong answer on the TACHS, so a good habit to build here is to answer every question.
Part 1 of 4 · 4 questions
Reading
Read the passage, then answer questions 1–4.
Every evening after dinner, Marisol climbed the six flights to the roof of her building in the Bronx, carrying a notebook and her grandfather’s old binoculars. The pigeons that most of her neighbors called a nuisance had become her summer project. She had counted them for forty-one days.
At first she simply wrote down numbers. Then she began to notice patterns. The birds crowded onto the water tower before a storm, as if they knew something the weather app did not. A small gray pigeon with one white feather in its tail always arrived last and always left first.
“You’re wasting your summer,” her brother Tomás told her. “They’re just birds.”
Marisol did not argue. Instead, she handed him the notebook. He turned the pages slowly, past the charts and the sketches, until he reached a page where she had written, in careful letters: “Day 23: White Feather did not come. Day 24: still no White Feather. Day 27: back!”
Tomás was quiet for a moment. “Where do you think it went?” he asked.
The next evening, there were two people on the roof.
1. What is the passage mainly about?
2. In paragraph 2, the word “patterns” means
3. Why is Tomás quiet after he reads the notebook?
4. What does the last sentence of the passage suggest?
0 of 4 answered. Skipped questions count as wrong, as on the real test, where guessing costs nothing.
Part 2 of 4 · 4 questions
Written Expression
Questions 1 and 2 are about this paragraph.
(1) Our class planted a vegetable garden behind the school in April.
(2) Each student were responsible for one row.
(3) By June, the tomato plants had grown taller than the fence.
(4) We gave most of the harvest to a food pantry on our block.
1. What is the best way to write the underlined part of sentence 2? “Each student were responsible”
2. Which sentence would best end the paragraph?
3. Which line contains a mistake?
4. What is the best way to combine these two sentences? “The storm knocked out the power. We read by flashlight.”
0 of 4 answered. Skipped questions count as wrong, as on the real test, where guessing costs nothing.
Part 3 of 4 · 6 questions
Mathematics
Work these on scratch paper, without a calculator first; since 2026 the real test has a basic on-screen calculator during eligible portions.
1. A sweater costs $40. It is on sale for 25% off. What is the sale price?
2. If 3x + 7 = 25, what is the value of x?
3. What number comes next in the pattern? 2, 6, 18, 54, …
4. A bag holds 3 red marbles, 5 blue marbles and 2 green marbles. One marble is picked without looking. What is the probability that it is blue?
5. A rectangle is 12 centimeters long and has a perimeter of 40 centimeters. What is its area?
6. Ana’s scores on four quizzes were 85, 90, 78 and one more score. The mean of the four scores is 85. What was the fourth score?
0 of 6 answered. Skipped questions count as wrong, as on the real test, where guessing costs nothing.
Part 4 of 4 · 3 questions
Ability
Figure Classification
1. The first three figures are alike in a certain way. Which answer choice goes with them?
Figure Matrices
2. Find the figure that completes the puzzle.
Paper Folding
3. A square sheet of paper is folded in half along the dashed line, left side over right side, and one hole is punched where shown. How will the paper look when it is unfolded?
0 of 3 answered. Skipped questions count as wrong, as on the real test, where guessing costs nothing.
Your result
Check all four parts to see a summary here. Your answers stay in this browser only.
Before test day
The TACHS is taken online at home, in six timed sub-tests of about 2 hours 10 minutes in all. Registration closes on Wednesday, October 28, 2026 at 11:00 PM ET, and the three high school choices must be entered by November 7. Everything else (the fee, the computer setup, how the high schools use the score) is on our TACHS dates and registration page.
Applying to a specialized high school too? The SHSAT is a different test: the official SHSAT practice tests. For private schools, see the ISEE practice test checker.
Format checked against the TACHS Student Handbook 2026 and tachsinfo.com on . Genius Prep is not affiliated with the TACHS or the dioceses.
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