HAIS Houston Private Schools Gifted Testing: The OLSAT & ISEE

• Testing for Houston Private Schools
• Program and Schools
• Preparing for Placement Testing
• Start Practicing with TestPrep-Online

Several private schools in Houston and its surrounding area require different testing from the HISD Vanguard programs. The OLSAT, ISEE, and/or HSPT are frequently required by these schools. Often, these schools utilize a combination of two out of three of these exams (usually the OLSAT and ISEE). The exams are generally administered in mid-January, primarily to students in the 5th-8th grade. However, some schools do require students in other grades to take one or more of these tests for admission purposes.

Avoid surprises the day of the test by properly preparing. Ask your school if they have samples of the test to be submitted and go over the questions with your child with enough time. You can also help your child revise the things they have learned in previous years of their education in various fun, creative ways.

Houston Area Independent Schools (HAIS) includes nearly 90 of Houston’s private schools. It is a a non-profit association throughout Houston and its surrounding area. The schools which are associated with HAIS are either accredited by TEPSAC (Texas Private School Accreditation Commission) or by a religious organization. Both preparatory schools as well as religious schools are members of HAIS and include educational opportunities for students from preschool through the 12th grade.

Admittance to certain programs may be conditioned upon succeeding one of the gifted children tests. These tests attempt to recognize when your child is gifted in hopes of offering a program that is best suited for their abilities. The tests often focus on the cognitive abilities and reasoning in the form of shape analogies and puzzles, a skill that can also be developed with practice. 

Not knowing how to solve one of these questions is not necessarily a sign of a child not being gifted, but instead could be that the child simply needs a small push to completely understand the idea. You can try some of the OLSAT or ISEE sample questions and see how well your child develops. 

Accordingly, some schools may also condition their acceptance upon the success on some other test. Make sure to have all the information about the schools you are interested in available, as well as testing dates, criteria, curriculum, and information about their staff. Choosing a school can be a very difficult thing for parents. There are many elements to take into consideration such as: curriculum, advantages and disadvantages of said school (compared to others), prestige, location, tuition fee, etc. Just remember that the goal is for your child to receive a proper education that will help them develop into independent, educated adults, and you certainly can help them achieve that outside school. 

The OLSAT and ISEE are difficult tests. These tests will play an important role in your child’s admission to the best private schools in Houston, therefore, it is essential to help your child prepare the OLSAT. TestPrep-Online offers study packs for the OLSAT, which include easy to use, child-friendly study materials for your child. Each study pack includes practice tests, helpful study guides, and hundreds of additional practice questions.

Your child can start by reading the study guides included that should help him understand what is to be expected. Our study guides also contain tips and detailed explanations of how to approach a question about the subjects that are statistically more challenging to the audience. Before you begin solving the full-length simulations, you can go over the study guides, summarize them, and then apply the logic to some of the questions of the test to check that you have complete understood them.

Begin preparing for the OLSAT and ISEE now! Check our our available practice tests and packs, or get our Family Membership for access to all our tests.

You can retake our tests as many times as you want, track your progress, and compare the results and the questions that you may still find difficulty.

In essence, it is ideal to have two or three weeks to prepare accordingly in a smooth, stress-free environment. Some areas may be more difficult for you to learn, so you can pay special attention to the explanations for those questions to understand the logic required to solve them.

All the questions in the practice pack contain detailed explanations with strategies that are intuitive and easy to learn. If you do not know how to solve a particular question, look at the explanation, try to understand why every sentence is important and how every detail is covered and then, write it on your own words to test your understanding of the question. That way, you can cover all the weak areas while strengthening your overall performance to succeed the day of the test.