On their first day back at middle school last week, my eighth-grade son and his classmates heard three words many have been dreading all summer: high school admissions.

“Can you believe they made us talk about it on the first day?’’ he said glumly afterward, unwilling to concede summer’s end so quickly.

It’s already time to decide if they want to register for the exam that determines who gets into some of the most competitive high schools in the U.S.

Welcome back.

At 13, most of these New York City middle schoolers are already experienced veterans of school choice. Like it or not, they hear hundreds of conversations about schools from parents, teachers, classmates and siblings.  In fifth grade, they likely toured up to a dozen or more middle schools. And they are getting ready to go back on the tour circuit again in the coming weeks, preparing portfolios in some cases and getting ready to be interviewed in others.

Already, the first decision looms:  Signing up for the Specialized High School Admission Test, known as the SHSAT, the exam that determines who gets into the city’s oversized high schools with outsized national reputations. According to the Department of Education calendar, students sign up between Sept. 15 and Oct. 6<!--more-->

The exams take place on Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 23 and 24. The test has two sections, verbal – with 45 questions – and math, with 50 questions.

“The test measures knowledge and skills you have gained over the years,’’ the test booklet says, a description that isn’t terribly helpful.

The test scores of students who take the exams – along with the way they rank the schools if they test high enough -- will decide admission into one of eight of the city’s specialized high schools: Stuyvesant High School (in Manhattan), Bronx High School of Science, Brooklyn Technical High School, Staten Island Tech, and Brooklyn Latin, plus three small specialized high schools located on CUNY campuses: High School of American Studies at Lehman College (in the Bronx), the High School of Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at City College (in Manhattan), and the Queens High School for the Sciences at York College).

Many eighth-graders students are already well into diligently prepping for the SHSAT, and with good reason: getting in opens the door to a high quality college prep experience, a challenging curriculum and a menu of advanced placement and language courses with clubs, sports and activities that aren’t easily replicated.

Many eighth-graders took prep courses last spring or over the summer, or are taking them now. Some may prepare by practicing test questions that can be found in the back of the specialized high school student handbook.

Competition is fierce: At Brooklyn Tech, for example, some 23,887 students listed the school as a choice on their application; the school offered spots to just 1,893.

I’ve always thought taking the exam is a good idea, on the theory that the more choices students have in the crazed admissions process the better. There’s little to lose in taking the exam, and it’s free. Students who get into specialized high schools in February will also hear where else they’ve been matched and can make a decision early on.

I’ve spoken to parents who have shunned test preparation. Plenty urge their children to simply sign up for the test and “wing it.”  The tactic actually has worked in some cases, but other students missed the cut-off point for admission by just a few heartbreaking points. Their parents said they wished they had pushed test prep more

The specialty high schools are not for everyone, but they do offer a terrific education and opportunities not easily found elsewhere.

Insideschools.org would love some insight from parents and students on SHSAT test prep: What has worked particularly well? Is taking the practice exams at the end of the specialized student handbook enough? Did anyone wish they had spent more time and/or money on test prep? Finally, is a big push really worth it?