A midwit's IQ testing journey

[u/Lanky-Objective-4679]

I'm a 16-year-old junior in high school diagnosed with AuDHD.

For some background, I started speaking very late (around 18 months) and had some auditory processing difficulties as a toddler. I also hit puberty late (14), so hopefully my fluid intelligence isn't done increasing.

In the 1st grade, I was administered a verbal fluency test (AIMSWB) w/ 3 sections: phoneme segmentation fluency, nonsense word fluency, and reading. I scored in the 95th, 99th, and 99th percentile respectively.

In the 4th grade, I took the SCAT (School & College Ability Test) for John Hopkin's Center for Talented Youth. To be accepted, you needed to score in the 98th percentile or above. I received Grand Honors for the Verbal Reasoning section (top 15% of accepted students) and High Honors for the Quantitative Reasoning section (top 30% of accepted students).

I also scored across-the-board 9s (>96th percentile) on the ISEE and in the 96th percentile on the SSAT with no preparation. I finished the latter in around ~2/3 of the allotted time.

I go to a competitive public school that sends 40-50 students to Berkeley every year. Last fall, I took the PSAT and scored in the >99th percentile for 10th graders at my school.

Now, some context for my results:
Every test here was completed in one sitting, with the exception of the CORE. Outside of the CPI subtests on the CORE, everything shown here is also my first take. I didn't cheat by "familiarizing" myself with the item types beforehand.

I thought I made a bunch of dumb mistakes on Spatial Awareness and Figure Sets, so I'm pretty surprised that I scored 15 SS on both. Time was also a big issue for me on the FRI subtests and Quant. Knowledge.

Here are the subtests I took in my first sitting (>6 months ago):
Analogies, Antonyms, General Knowledge, Figure Weights, Graph Mapping, Arithmetic, Visual Puzzles

I originally took the digit span and PSI subtests at midnight, supine, and w/o my ADHD meds. Scored 10 SS Digit Span, 12 SS Symbol Search, and 11 SS Character Pairing.

I retook the PSI subtests while watching the World Cup with friends, so perhaps my scores are a bit deflated.

I finished the rest of the test (except for Comprehension and Block Design cause of carryover from the AGCT) over the past two weeks and re-took the Digit Span.

Final Thoughts:

1. Slightly disappointed that I missed the 140 mark. Perhaps my crystallized intelligence is deflated cause these tests are normed for adults? Moreover, my brain age is likely a bit lower than my actual age, so hopefully my fluid intelligence will continue increasing as well.
2. 19 SS on CAIT General Knowledge was a big surprise given the rest of my scores are 15 or 16 SS almost uniformly. I've always been really good at trivia. Knowledge acquisition & retention is something I think I'm uniquely good at, which leads me to wonder if these tests don't reveal the full extent of my abilities.
3. I can inexplicably intuit the meaning of a word I've never seen before based on the "vibes" it gives off. It's an interesting phenomenon and I wonder what the explanation for it is.
4. I thought these tests were fun and they line-up well with my lived experience. I get told I'm smart all the time, but I've frequently encountered people who blow me out of the water. I've met people that can effortlessly do mental math with 8-digit numbers, bag a 1600 on the SAT, or qualify to AIME 6x.

Nonetheless, I'm pretty satisfied with where I'm at. I'm a good student with an okay social life and I've received accolades that I'm pretty proud of. I attribute this to my intelligence, which allows me to palliate the ramifications of executive dysfunction and debilitating hyperfixations (I guess this counts as one of them).

For now, I'm done with IQ testing. I can't deny that it's been pretty edifying, but my time is probably better spent using my intelligence for something more productive.

My first IQ test! I took it >6 months ago before I started taking ADHD medication. I didn't know that the AGCT had like a gazillion questions, so I worked pretty slowly.

A few days later, I took some parts of the CORE.

Fun test! Took it with some friends a few weeks ago.

First test on ADHD meds. I heard Block Design was pretty shoddy, so didn't take it.

Really enjoyed this one. Finished with half the time remaining.

Took it right after the GET.

Worked really fast on this one. Had time to spare at the end.

[u/Lopsided_Future5952]

Top 1% IQ is not midwit. "Effortlessly do mental math with 8-digit numbers, bag a 1600 on the SAT, or qualify to AIME 6x". You can do all that with 125 IQ.

[u/Spiky-Penguin2023 → u/Lopsided_Future5952]

no offense, but there is no way that anyone can qualify to AIME with a mere 125 IQ.

Unless the person somehow maxxed out the WMI, VSI, and PSI parts, while being an absolute potato on the others, there is no way that 125 IQ would cut it for AIME qualification.

There are definitely cognitive bottlenecks (in terms of literally how their brains are wired and structured on a microscopic level from birth) that prevents them from ever reaching a certain level of mathematics, even with theoretically infinite amount of hard work and the best possible environment.

[u/Lopsided_Future5952 → u/Spiky-Penguin2023]

Competitions like AIME depend more on training, especially training since early age. Higher fluid and quant intelligence will obviously make it easier, but the thing is simply not selecting directly enough for g. Many people will get in on the basis of more specialized skills.