OLSAT Quantitative Reasoning Test Section Online Preparation, Sample Questions and Tips – 2025
What Is the OLSAT Quantitative Reasoning Test Section?
Quantitative Reasoning is one out of three subcategories on the OLSAT’s Nonverbal test section. Regardless of age or testing level, the OLSAT will include verbal questions and nonverbal questions. Within each section there will be subcategories and subsections that conduct further testing on a specific relevant topic. Once every student has completed the OLSAT tests, the correct answers from both sections are added together to create a composite score. This composite score is then used by schools to admit developed children into a gifted and talented program.
Quantitative Reasoning assesses a student’s ability to infer relationships between numbers and deduce computational rules within context. As the name implies, Quantitative Reasoning is focused on a child’s mathematical skills, which means that children taking lower levels of the OLSAT exam will not be completing this subcategory. Moreover, the Quantitative Reasoning subcategory falls into the Nonverbal Section, which means there will be minimal, if any, words included in this section. The lack of words allows students with underdeveloped language skills to have a fair chance of scoring well on the OLSAT exam.
What Are the OLSAT Quantitative Reasoning Test Sections?
The Quantitative Reasoning subcategory of the OLSAT test is divided into three distinct subsections. Each Quantitative Reasoning subsections will include number series, number inference, and number matrix questions. Only children taking the OLSAT levels D through G will be required to complete these sections. OLSAT levels A through C will be completing other subsections and will not be expected to have a developed quantitative reasoning skillset. Quantitative Reasoning subsections are designed to test each child’s mathematical skills by asking them to complete incomplete number sequences or identifying mathematical patterns among numbers.
How to Read OLSAT Quantitative Reasoning Test Section Score Report?
After the OLSAT exam has been completed, parents will receive an OLSAT score report that provides an overview of how your child performed on the exam. The first score parents will notice is the raw score. This is the tallied up total number of answers that were responded to correctly from both the Verbal and Nonverbal Section. The next score parents will see is the School Ability Index (SAI), which is a normalized comparison of raw scores amongst children that are close in age by a few months. The highest SAI score possible is 150, while the average student will score a 100. Finally, the last score parents will see is the Percentile Rank shown as a percentage. This percentage represents the percentage of children that your child scored higher than on the entire OLSAT exam.
| Subsection Type | OLSAT Level | Subsection Description |
| Number Series | Level D – G | Number Series questions assess a child’s ability to infer and understand a pattern among a series of letters or numbers. Then, students will be asked to choose a letter or number that would match the pattern and complete the number series. |
| Number Inference | Level D – G | Number Inference questions assess a child’s ability to infer and understand specific relationships between numbers or number groupings. |
OLSAT Quantitative Reasoning Test Section Tips
- While preparing, it is helpful to identify a child’s areas of strength and weakness. This is accomplished by taking a practice exam in its entirety, followed by focusing on areas that your child received lower scores in. Your child can repeatedly test themselves on sections that they are less familiar with until they feel that they have mastered the information in that specific topic. Areas that your child feels strongest in should also be occasionally practiced as well. Otherwise, your child may focus on a single section, and come test day, may forget the information they learned from other sections.
- Thoroughly read through entire explanations at the end of a practice exam. Explanations offer detailed justifications for why certain difficult questions need to be answered in a certain way. Sometimes it may be difficult to pinpoint where or why your child is answering questions wrong. Explanations fix this issue by pointing out why a question may be difficult to answer while also teaching your child how to look for certain patterns that could help them answer that type of question correctly in the future.
How to Prepare for the OLSAT Quantitative Reasoning Test Section?
Although the Quantitative Reasoning is only one subcategory on the Nonverbal Test, it is imperative that children and their parents know how to prepare. The OLSAT is a popular exam used by schools to identify children that are considered gifted and talented. Practicing with practice exams has been proven to be an effective method that significantly improves testing results and also strengthens your child’s learning abilities. Gifted and talented programs only accept children that are considered to have exceptional cognitive abilities. However, sometimes students develop test anxiety that results in them answering questions wrong, even if they usually know how to answer those questions right. Practice exams help children become familiar with the test topics, which allows them to feel more confident about the material on testing day. Parents should sit down with their children and rigorously go through the practice exams. Make sure that your child is familiar with the material so that they can ace the OLSAT’s Quantitative Reasoning test section.
Free OLSAT Practice Questions
Based on your grade level select the relevant free practice materials:
| OLSAT Level | School Grade |
| Level A | Pre-K and Kindergarten |
| Level B | 1st Grade |
| Level C | 2nd Grade |
| Level D | 3rd Grade |
| Level E | 4th and 4th Grade |
| Level F | 6th, 7th, and 8th Grades |
| Level G | 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th Grades |