A recent post on the “Applying to High Schools in NYC” Facebook group reminded me that some people may not be familiar with features on NYC-SIFT which can suggest new programs for you to research.
There are four ways to do this on NYC-SIFT:
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Similar schools and programs. The bottom of every school and program page is a section called “Similar Schools” or “Similar Programs” (depending on the page you are on). NYC-SIFT uses a combination of school size, class offerings, and academic/survey scores to generate a list that is similar to the school or program you are currently viewing. If you imagine that every school or program is a node on an interconnected web where the strength of connections are based on similarity, NYC-SIFT will give you a list of the surrounding nodes (up to 10).
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NYC-SIFT Advisor. This tool can be found under “Guides”. It can generate a list of suggestions in two ways: based on your favorite programs or your answers to a series of questions. The former is an expanded version of the “Similar programs” method mentioned above. The latter is similar to using filters, but streamlined to help those who don’t exactly know what they’re looking for.
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Filters. If you have a better idea of what you’re looking for, play around with all of the filtering options. There are 23 different categories to filter on, including a new category called “Travel Time”, which will restrict schools and programs to commute time from any zipcode in NYC.
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See what other New Yorkers have done. Under “Guide” → “Data & Reports” → “Program Popularity”, select “Program Ranking” and the appropriate group and borough to see how programs were ranked on applications from 2023-24 (I am working on getting 2024-25 data). You will be able to sort the most popular programs that were ranked between 1-3, 4-6, 7-9, and 10-12.
Hopefully those are enough to get your list started or expanded to a comfortable point!