OLSAT Levels A Through G: Which Test Does Your Child Take?

The Otis-Lennon School Ability Test (OLSAT) is widely used by school districts for gifted program screening and general ability testing. One of its most distinctive features is a tiered level structure — the test is tailored to different grade levels, so the question types your child encounters depend entirely on their grade.

OLSAT Levels by Grade

What Makes Each Level Different

All OLSAT levels include both verbal and nonverbal question types, but the balance and complexity shift significantly as levels increase:

• Levels A–B (K–1): Heavily oral. A test administrator reads questions aloud because young children can't read independently. Questions focus on following directions, aural reasoning, and basic classification.
• Levels C–D (Grades 2–3): Children begin reading questions independently. Verbal content includes verbal analogies, sentence completion, and logical selection. Nonverbal content shifts toward figural analogies and pattern completion.
• Levels E–F (Grades 4–7): More complex verbal reasoning (inferential thinking, verbal classification), more abstract nonverbal reasoning (figural series, figural analogies), and quantitative reasoning (number inference).
• Level G (Grades 8–12): Most abstract. Includes complex logical problems, symbolic reasoning, and multi-step figural series.

OLSAT Verbal vs. Nonverbal

Within each level, the OLSAT divides questions into two broad categories:

• Verbal questions (~50%): Verbal comprehension (following directions, sentence completion, word meaning) and verbal reasoning (analogies, logical selection, inference)
• Nonverbal questions (~50%): Pictorial reasoning (picture classification, picture analogies), figural reasoning (figural classification, figural analogies, pattern matrices), and quantitative reasoning (number series, number inference)

OLSAT Scores Explained

The OLSAT produces a School Ability Index (SAI) — similar to an IQ score, with a mean of 100 and standard deviation of 16. It also produces a percentile rank comparing your child to others of the same grade in the national standardization sample.

• 90th percentile: SAI approximately 120–122 — qualifies for most district gifted programs
• 95th percentile: SAI approximately 125 — qualifies for more selective programs
• 97th+ percentile: SAI approximately 128+ — required for NYC's citywide programs

Prep Focus by Level

• Levels A–B: Focus on listening comprehension, verbal direction-following, and basic picture analogies. Read to your child daily and ask inferential questions like "why do you think the character did that?"
• Levels C–D: Add verbal analogy practice (category, function, part-to-whole relationships) and figural pattern work (matrix puzzles).
• Levels E–G: Add number series practice, complex logical deduction, and multi-step figural pattern recognition. Speed matters more at these levels — practice pacing.