CogAP or OLSAT?

[Embassy]

Which test would you recommend the CogAP or the OLSAT? Which one would give me the most information about my child's learning abilities when I suspect giftedness? Intelligence testing or educational testing is not possible right now.

[Crimson Wife]

I haven't used the OLSAT but my DD took the CogAT last year. I tested out-of-level to raise the ceiling, but even so it still wasn't high enough on the verbal portion. So this year, she's taking the EXPLORE. I'm not sure whether you still have time to register for the February test date but that's something to look into.

 

The CogAT is a fairly straightforward test, mostly different types of analogies and classification (verbal & pictorial), plus number sequences and sentence completion. There is one rather odd subtest that asks the child to visualize folding a piece of paper, punching hole(s) in it, and then figuring out what it would look like after it's unfolded. My DH, who studied engineering undergrad and has strong spatial reasoning skills, had difficulty with some of the problems on that section when I showed him the test booklet.

 

The most useful part of the CogAT was the correlation to the ITBS. It helped us identify areas of relative strength where she performed better than would be expected and relative weakness where she didn't perform as well as would be expected given her CogAT.