Just chiming in to say we are in the same boat and wondering.  I have no real information.  My kid’s friends (neighborhood school in Tier 4 area) seem to have done really well on the test — I think every score I heard was in the 90s on each side. But I don’t know what that means in the big picture.

Cut scores seem to climb year-to-year (more kids doing extra test prep? more schools teaching to the test?), but CPS population is also dropping, so there should be fewer kids competing. <shrug>

Anecdotally, it seems that this year’s HSAT was a bit tougher than last year’s apparently “easier” inaugural HSAT (hence the numerous 900 scores).  If that really was the case, it would seem that this year’s cut scores will be slightly lower.  But, who knows, they may have gone up too; we really can’t know.  One thing we can know for sure, wouldn’t take this forum as a representative sample size about scores, it seems there are a number of active parents on here trying to get their kid into Payton/Northside and those concerned about 899/900 sub-scores.  Definitely a small sliver of the total pool of kids applying to all the SEHS spots in the city.

fyi, there is no 899 score possible. It goes from 900 to 898.