Plain-language definitions
Admissions glossary
D
- DBN
- District Borough Number — the unique code that identifies every NYC public school (e.g. 02M397).
- deferred acceptance
- The student-proposing matching algorithm (Gale–Shapley) behind the main match. It returns one best offer and is strategy-proof: rank in true preference order.
- Discovery Program
- A summer-bridge pathway into the testing specialized high schools for eligible disadvantaged students who scored just below the cutoff.
M
- MySchools
- The NYC Public Schools online portal where families apply to 3-K, Pre-K, Kindergarten, middle, and high school.
P
- priority group
- An ordered tier (e.g. zoned+sibling, then zoned, then in-district) that decides who is considered first for a school's seats before the random number breaks ties.
R
- random number
- A single number assigned each application cycle and reused at every tie-break that year. Often called the “lottery number.”
S
- screened admission
- An admissions method that ranks applicants on academic records (e.g. prior-year core grades) into groups, admitting group by group with a random-number tie-break.
- SHSAT
- The Specialized High Schools Admissions Test — the sole admissions criterion for eight of the nine specialized high schools (LaGuardia uses an audition instead).
W
- waitlist
- You're automatically waitlisted at every school you ranked above your offer. Accepting your offer never hurts your waitlist position.
Z
- zoned school
- A school tied to your home address that gives priority — sometimes a near-guaranteed match — to children living in its geographic boundary.