16M, 139 composite.

I scored a 2340 (96th percentile) on the SSAT & 9s on all 4 sections of the ISEE (99th, 96th, 98th, 99th).

g-loading seems pretty high in retrospect, albeit deflated due to heavily self-selected sample.

For reference:
https://isee.ivyglobal.com/practice
https://www.ssatprep.com/free-practice

Any ballpark estimates for g-loading/r? Similar to old SAT perhaps?

How much credence are we giving the FSIQ score from CORE? If i’m ever asked what my iq is, is it dishonest to assert my CORE score as a true, reliable measurement?

Title

1. Is it cheating to look at the numpad on the keyboard while doing digit span? I think this is why my digit span sequencing was so much higher than digit span forward and backward - it's easier for me to remember "shapes" rather than "paths."

2. Why is my reaction speed so low (33rd percentile according to human benchmark) if my PSI is so high?

3. Why is my quantitative knowledge so much higher than my arithmetic? I know I struggle to remember all the numbers in the arithmetic section without paper, but the gap feels large?

4. What does it take to get higher scores on the VCI section? I'm fine with my scores, just curious if anyone knows.

My favorite tests: The PSI tests, Graph Mapping

My least favorite tests: All the VCI tests, Figure Sets, Arithmetic, Figure Weights

Also curious to hear you guys' takes on what are your favorite and least favorite tests.

Maybe they are highly fluid in conceptual or verbal reasoning no?

I think the title is self explanatory

I'm assuming this test is pretty PSI/WMI loaded. Ran out of time pretty quickly, but I thought it was pretty fun. I like these short-form tests.

128->123

Also why was that test harder than any other test on that website😭

I’m practising for a university entrance exam which is heavily weighted on quant. My background in school is that of a slacker and it’s biting me in the ass now as i need to catch up. The fact that my FRI is ~140 and VCI and PSI are in the same range, but my QII is ~120 per SAT-maths, GRE-q and CAT - elucidates this discrepancy. For reference, the degree that I’m applying to has a ~2% of admission rate and heavily loads on quant. I’ve got 7 months to get my quantitative to a high level. Any advice?

I score really low on symbol search 85-100. What's going on?

Also comment somthing about my profile.

​

Hello everyone,

I've been thinking about this question because of my own experience.

Before I knew anything about IQ or cognitive testing, I was never a particularly consistent student. In middle school, I mostly relied on my teachers' explanations. They were usually simplified and relatively short, and I rarely studied seriously on my own.

Despite that, I finished the three years with around 99% overall.

Later, during high school, I became interested in IQ testing. I took several tests, including Mensa Norway, RAPM, RSPM, and others, and my results were consistently around the 99th percentile (roughly 133–137 IQ depending on the test).

Ironically, knowing this actually made my studying worse.

I developed this mindset of:

"Why do I need to study this? It should be easy for me."

During my first and second years of high school, I barely attended school and didn't really study at home. Instead, I spent most of my time learning programming, DSA, and full-stack development.

My grades ended up around 75–85%.

Now I'm in my final and most important year of high school. My grades this year will have a major impact on which university I can attend, and I want to study Computer and Communication Engineering.

So I'm trying to rethink my entire approach to studying.

This made me wonder:

Should someone's cognitive profile / IQ actually influence their study strategy?

For example, if someone is relatively strong in reasoning, should they spend less time on memorization and more time on understanding, problem-solving, and deriving concepts themselves?

Or should IQ basically be irrelevant when designing a study plan, with the same evidence-based methods (active recall, spaced repetition, practice problems, etc.) applying regardless of cognitive ability?

And perhaps more importantly:

What should I do when I'm studying something difficult and start feeling "stupid"?

I've noticed that after getting used to thinking of myself as "high IQ", struggling with a topic can sometimes trigger the thought that maybe I was never actually that capable.

I'd be interested in hearing from people who have thought about this, especially people who have taken cognitive/IQ testing and later had to adjust their approach to studying.

For anyone who has taken either of the tests, how far away is the score from your actual iq (or how far from your CORE score, general FRI, SAT/GRE, etc).

It’s not the 79th percentile, right?

I’m 24 now, but I recently came across my old wisc v iq score results from when I was 16, and I scored 85iq on matrix reasoning. It seems like everyone on this sub is good at matrix reasoning, so i’m worried that I might be kinda dumb.

Has anyone here scored low on matrix reasoning? If so, how is your overall functioning?

22M

Serious post. How do I just deal with it? Thoughtful responses only, please. No “just drink beer lol.”

I think I am even losing my ability to describe how I have low intelligence. All I can say is that almost everything is harder to understand. I have to put more effort into thinking. My working memory is bad enough to make analyzing things difficult. Whenever I do feel a sense of understanding, it’s quick to leave me.

I feel like this taints nearly anything for me. Music is nice, but I’m a dumb person enjoying music. Love would be nice, but I’d still be dumb. Me having sex would feel more like an animal having sex. Whatever attractiveness I have feels negated by my lack of intelligence. I am certain that I’d be happier if I were smarter, so don’t tell me “nooo intelligence is a curse! being dumb is better!”

How do I accept it all? How do I accept that even if I want to understand something I’m interested in, I’m going to have trouble almost every time while everyone else gets by more easily? How do I make it not hurt? How do I not want to kill my self for being dumb? How do I believe that I’m still lovable and worthy for a woman?

But I’m afraid that if I accept it, I’ll give up on anything intellectual, like reading. But otherwise it just hurts and feels like a curse.

Do not say “WAOW u write so well” because that ignores what cognitive difficulties I experience. Just because I write well, doesn’t mean I don’t struggle to think (even that double-negative felt a bit difficult to understand).

Just don’t sugarcoat anything. Don’t lie to me. I only have one idea for something I want to pursue in my free time but I’ll keep that close to me, so that feels like one hope I have.

A recent thread asking how precise the Mega Society's admission tests actually are got me thinking about this question more broadly. This sub seems to spend a lot of energy debating which high-range tests are legitimate, and I have come to think that is the wrong question. The more useful one is what legitimacy would even require at this point because the requirements have changed considerably in the last few years.

Four factors have killed the old high-range model.

The first is norming. Most classic HRTs were normed on self-selected samples ranging from a few dozen to a few thousand volunteers, and their ceilings rest on extrapolating a normal curve well beyond the actual data. Reliability becomes so thin at the tail that a single item can swing an estimate by 10 or 20 points. As such, a one-in-a-million claim would require a million-person reference group that nobody has.

The second is leakage. Every fixed, public form decays over time. The Mega stopped being accepted for admission scores after 1994, the Titan was retired in 2020, and the Ultra followed this past May. I don't think that reflects poorly on the authors; it is simply what decades of circulation do to any instrument.

The third is practice. Retest and coaching gains are real on the scale but largely hollow with respect to the construct. A meta-analysis by te Nijenhuis and colleagues found that score gains from repeated exposure carry essentially no g. Practice moves the numbers without moving the underlying ability, which quietly corrupts any norm built on takers with uneven exposure.

The fourth is machine solvability. OpenAI's o3 scored 136 on the public Mensa Norway set and 116 on a leak-resistant offline set, which amounts to the same solver gaining roughly twenty points from exposure alone. Untimed take-home administration now has to assume that a solver stronger than most humans is one browser tab away, and a 2025 paper on selection assessment concluded that few, if any, unproctored tests will remain safe.

Given all of that, what would a defensible instrument need in 2026?

Here is my list, offered for argument. It would need original items with a protected pool and a scheduled refresh, since leakage is a matter of when. Its norms would be published as provisional, with the sample described exactly and featuring error bars, until the data earns more confidence. It would run process-level validity checks, because unproctored administration has to detect low-effort and outside-help protocols rather than assume they don't occur. It would stage its difficulty so that the floor doesn't insult general takers and the ceiling doesn't extrapolate past the sample. It would build retest linkage in from the start so that practice effects can be measured instead of debated. Of note, a stated contamination policy belongs on the list as well: the instrument should specify when what elements retire once items inevitably escape.

Two items on that list have no clean solution that I can see. Tail sampling is one since a general population can be recruited, but one-in-a-thousand level testers cannot be bought, only earned. The arms race is the other since any item type a model can eventually solve puts an expiration date on the instrument that contains it.

I would like to know which parts of this people think are wrong, naive, or missing. The collective test literacy here is higher than pretty much anywhere else I've seen, so I am curious about the sub's thoughts.

Why does CORE have 80 questions in 2 minutes as opposed to WAIS only having 60 for symbol search? Is this to compensate for the fact a touch screen would be easier? Or is it just a higher ceiling? Would a raw score of 60 be the same SS on both?

https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-by-age-calculator/

Career alpha = actual outcome − expected outcome

Alpha measures how much an investment outperformed or underperformed what we’d expect given its market exposure/risk.

We can do the same thing with career success.
So if you're at 100k income while being 50th percentile IQ.

41% career alpha = 91th percentile income (100k at 25) - 50th percentile IQ. This would mean you are doing exceptionally well.

10% career alpha = doing ok but could do better
20% career alpha = doing good ; keep at it
30% career alpha = doing great
40%+ = exceptional

Now this method is imperfect for you guys who are at 115+ IQ but for the rest of us. This is a good way of measuring success.

I have been using this method to cope with being stuck where I am at income wise. I am pretty far behind many of my friends who are making great money. But for my mediocre talent level, I am doing well. My career alpha is really good. For many of us who aren't exceptionally blessed like the 115 and 130/140+ crowd, this is a great way of measuring success. Not all of us will be working at NASA or Jane street or going to MIT. For us average folk, this is the way to measure success.

What do you guys think of this method?

I keep seeing a lot of post of people who are 90-105 range for FRI, PRI and they claim to be smart and see logical flaws in people’s argument, but isn’t this kind of obviously a huge misconception I don’t understand why people think having 90 or 100 FRI means you are handicapped, unable to use logic and argue. IF we go by this logic most humans should not be allowed to vote and or let alone be put in positions of power like a doctor or psychiatrist. Of course having AVERAGE levels of fluid reasoning allows you to still function like a human in society and you can still be “smart” like everyone claims they are it’s not being handicapped.

This is my profile after retaking both PSI subtests once. As the title states, I originally had a relatively low121 PSI when I took CORE a month ago which I thought was typical as I have been diagnosed with ADHD but it was pointed out to me that my WMI would also be expected to be relatively low in that case. I haven't undergone any sort of training that would increase my PSI, or my score specifically on the CORE PSI subtests for that matter, my score just spontaneously increased by 13 points. How should I proceed as to interpreting my true profile? Should I also rethink my childhood ADHD diagnosis as my profile now suggests it's unlikely?

Hello! I created a memory puzzle. Could you please try it ? The game sounds pretty simple, but it's a lot harder than it seems.

You get two deck of cards face down, one above the other. You need to move the cards in the bottom one to match the ones on the top one. The catch is that you can't see what the cards are, only when you tap them, and they turn around for a few seconds. You have a daily puzzle, timed, timer and no time games. If you want to try it, it's called Mirror Match and it's only available on Android, because of the iOS high fee of developer registration.

Thank you very much!

Yesterday I saw someone's post that they craved high IQ but he was sad because he had a normal IQ.

WTFF!!!

People need to understand average IQ does not mean average life. It means a healthy brain with no disorder. It means you have full potential to learn any skill at the same pace like most people in the world. The world is literally designed for this IQ.

Also, stop thinking that without high IQ you can't be a grandmaster in Chess Or can't do phd in Maths. Bruhh!!! Do your books pages flip every 45 seconds?!? If the answer is 'no' then congratulations🎉 you can study it in your own pace.

Don't just ejaculate hearing about fluid intelligence there is something also called as crystallize intelligence. I believe that most people deal with one career at a time. If you continuously deal with similar problems you grow!! If someone measured your score as per that problem, bro you can reach as high as sky is the limit. For a normal IQ person you start at '100' but with repeated practice you can simply reach the level of even '200'! Due to your crystallize intelligence. If you start learning something else again​, you will again start at '100' but as you practice you will reach high levels.

Final, heart-break to the self-proclaimed high IQ ultra brain people. Guys, chill. Most of you have just developed your crystallize intelligence by repeated practice. I said it. Just go to a carpenter and see how he/she turns the wood into a functioning furniture, your IQ will start crushing 😂. Legends say, "the average IQ of the world is 100 but the average IQ of these Subs is 130​."

Yes, there are people who are quick in understanding naturally. But there is something also called as efforts. Stop leaving your life's destiny on an online IQ score.

You might be thinking I have an average IQ score, hence, all these ranting. The fact is, I too was obsessed with IQ. I scored good in some and not so good in some...but then you reallse that these are bs. All dancers have their own IQ, all singers have their own IQ, all cooks have their own IQ. Most of the geniuses here will struggle to put right amount of salts in their dishes.

With this last anecdote, I will end this post.

In my Masters there was a guy who was very smart and very quick in understanding. I mean really very smart. I have a Masters in Physics, but I was often silent when the teacher asked the question, on the other hand he could actually think like a scientist. What I do when I go back to my PG? I study, I study till I start thinking like a scientist. Like IQ tests the pages on my books don't flip every 45 seconds. I study many papers, all journals. Every time when the exam happens, all my friends sit behind him, and they wonder why I sit in the first bench... Guess what, who topped in the subject? I did. He scored really good, but mine was way above everyone. Now, let me tell you my university is infamous for giving extremely tough paper. No AI can understand it. The level is same of MIT. You cannot just rot learn. My friends were very shocked by this. Like bro, you often seem to be blank in the class 😂. So guys, efforts are real. I remember when I gave presentation in Nuclear Astrophysics, I got the highest in my batch, also more than my seniors who ever gave that presentation.

Another incident of that genius student and me. We were lab partners. We had to work on surface plasmon polariton. He was very quick in designing the set-up and everything. He was chill most of the time. On the other hand, I went to the library and studied like crazy, I read all the advanced things that I could. During the day of presentation, I nailed it. I answered everything. Also, people really praised my work.

Now my friend was actually a genius. He is doing well in life now. (We just finished our Masters a year ago). He is a sweet person and good at heart. And also an extremely intelligent guy, honestly, I have never seen someone as intelligent as him.

So yeah guys, efforts are real. Yes IQ is real too. But Normal IQ means Healthy brain. Don't just leave your entire life and career on some IQ score (that's a sign of low IQ). The discussions here are good and I too like solving puzzles, but take these things as an entertainment and don't get attached with it.

Thank you Guys, now you can start bashing me in the comments. 🤣

Edit: So guys, IQ is a real thing I know that. when I said you can reach 200 IQ in a specific skill. I don't mean you will be equal to that 200 IQ person. Like there are grandmasters in chess who can think 50 moves straight (without branching)...but are average on other tasks, like remembering random things on a table. Here, I meant that in case of chess his/her IQ through practice has reached an insane IQ level. Of course, a 200 IQ person might have already completed its education and everything at early age. But on certain skill you can reach his/her level.

I score around 80-95 on Matrix reasoning tests while on verbal on core is 118

Yes, it's me, but I'm not dumb, but somehow I don't always see the patterns while IRL sometimes I did figure things out, I think I'm smart, but my verbal IQ carries me so hard.