The Otis-Lennon is group-administered (except preschool), multiple choice, taken with pencil and paper, measures verbal, quantitative, and spatial reasoning ability.
The test has twenty-one subtests that are organized into five areas—verbal comprehension, verbal reasoning, pictorial reasoning, figural reasoning, and quantitative reasoning—each with equal numbers of verbal and non-verbal items:[1] The number of questions and the time limit varies accordingly: In 2012 the New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE) adjusted its criteria for inferring gifted and talented needs of students in kindergarten through the third grade.
Citing a disproportionate number of students scoring in the 99th percentile — the far right tail of the distribution curve — the NYC DOE replaced the Bracken (BSRA) with the Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test (NNAT), and changed the weighting, lowering the OLSAT from two-thirds to one-third and giving the NNAT two-thirds.
[2] A local news source reported that many parents were unhappy about the decrease in the weighting of the OLSAT and the implementation of the NNAT.
[3] High scores on the OLSAT are accepted by high IQ societies such as American Mensa (requiring a total SAI ≥ 132) and Intertel (requiring a total SAI ≥ 138), the latter also accepting scores on this test's historical predecessor, the OLMAT.