If you're applying to a Catholic high school in New York City or New Jersey, the TACHS exam is standing between you and your first-choice school. Downloading a TACHS practice test PDF is one of the smartest moves you can make — you can drill questions on the subway, at the kitchen table, or anywhere else without needing a Wi-Fi connection.
This page gives you a free, printable PDF loaded with TACHS-style questions covering all four tested areas: Reading, Language, Math, and Abilities. Use it to spot your weak sections early and spend your study time where it actually counts.
TACHS stands for Test for Admission into Catholic High Schools. It's the standard admissions test for Catholic high schools in the New York City metropolitan area, including schools in the Archdiocese of New York and the Diocese of Brooklyn. Most students sitting for it are in 8th grade — typically 13 or 14 years old — and they take it once, in the fall of their final middle school year.
The exam is not pass/fail in the traditional sense. You receive a percentile score, and every school sets its own admissions threshold. A score that gets you into one school might not be competitive at another. That's why knowing where you stand relative to other test-takers matters more than hitting some abstract "passing" number.
The test covers four content areas:
The Abilities section surprises a lot of students. It doesn't test what you've studied in school — it tests how quickly you can identify visual patterns and logical relationships. You can't cram content for it, but you can absolutely learn to recognize the question formats and move through them faster.
Three exams compete for 8th-grade test-takers in the New York area: TACHS, HSPT, and ISEE. They're not interchangeable.
The HSPT (High School Placement Test) is used by many Catholic schools nationwide and by some NYC-area schools that don't accept TACHS. It includes a Quantitative section (number sequences and figure analogies) and a Verbal section that goes deeper into vocabulary. If you're applying to schools that accept both, you may end up taking both exams.
The ISEE (Independent School Entrance Exam) is primarily used by independent, non-Catholic private schools. It includes an essay and is scored differently — scaled scores plus percentile ranks within a specific norm group.
TACHS is the one you need if you're targeting Catholic high schools in the Archdiocese of New York or Diocese of Brooklyn. Check each school's website to confirm which test they accept before you register.
Online practice has its place, but PDF practice does something different. When you print out a test and work through it with a pencil and a timer, you're simulating the actual test conditions more closely than any browser-based quiz can. The TACHS is a paper test — you're filling in bubbles under time pressure, not clicking through screens.
Printing a full TACHS practice test PDF and sitting down for a timed session trains you to:
Aim for at least two full timed practice sessions before the actual test. Use the first to diagnose. Use the second to verify you've improved.
The Reading section leans hard on inference. You won't find many questions where the answer is lifted word-for-word from the passage. Instead, you need to draw conclusions the author implies but doesn't state directly. Read each passage actively — underline the main idea in each paragraph as you go. When a question asks what the author "suggests" or "implies," treat it as a logic puzzle, not a memory test.
Language questions test grammar and mechanics: subject-verb agreement, punctuation, sentence fragments, run-ons, and paragraph organization. One useful shortcut: read the answer choices aloud (silently, in your head). Grammatical errors often sound wrong before you can articulate why they're wrong. Trust that instinct, then verify.
Word problems dominate the TACHS Math section. The math itself usually isn't advanced — it's the setup that trips people up. Train yourself to identify what the question is actually asking before you start calculating. Underline the key numbers and the final question. Then solve. Many wrong answers on TACHS Math exist specifically to trap students who solved for the wrong thing.
The Abilities section is pure pattern recognition. You'll see figure sequences (what comes next?), figure analogies (A is to B as C is to ?), and hole-punch/folding questions. Speed matters here — don't linger on any single item. If a pattern isn't jumping out at you after 15 seconds, mark your best guess and move on. Exposure to these question types is the only real prep: the more you see, the faster you get.
The TACHS is typically administered in November or early December. Most students in the Archdiocese of New York take it on a single scheduled Saturday. That means if you're starting in August or September, you have a solid 3–4 month runway.
Months 1–2: Diagnostic + foundation work. Take a full practice test under real conditions. Score it. Then spend these weeks building skills in your two weakest sections — don't spread yourself thin across everything.
Month 3: Mixed practice. Alternate between focused section drills and full timed practice tests. Review every mistake. By the end of month 3, you should have a stable sense of your percentile range.
Final 2–3 weeks: Light review and confidence building. No new material. One more full timed test about 10 days out. Then rest.
The single biggest mistake students make is starting too late and trying to cram in October. The Abilities section in particular doesn't respond to last-minute cramming — it builds with steady, repeated exposure over time.
Want to keep practicing interactively? Head to the TACHS practice test page for full quizzes with instant scoring and detailed answer explanations.