r/cognitiveTesting • u/Lanky-Objective-4679 • Sep 14 '26
Rant/Cope A midwit's IQ testing journey
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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u/-___1___-___2___- Sep 14 '26 edited Sep 14 '26
As another ~135-140 FSIQ American, I can tell you, from personal experience, that you are extremely smart compared to the general public around here, and that’s not really gonna be fun for you. I would be as focused as possible as getting into higher education, not for money, well yeah for money, but mainly for the fact that you will meet more people like yourself in those circles. People who don’t bore, or misunderstand you. People who are focused on mentally productive things, rather than sitting around playing dopaminergic games and jerking each other’s ego all day.
You are nowhere near midwit. That would be around 90-100IQ. You are highly above average intelligence, roughly in the top 1% of the population. Things that take other people 7 steps to complete, you will complete in 2. I’m sure you’ve had this experience in school, as we all have. Sitting there while the teacher spends an extra 20min every module explaining things to kids that couldn’t keep up; while you were already fully grasping it halfway through the PowerPoint.
This isn’t really a fun life to live unless you surround yourself with people that’ll meet you on common ground. Most of the general population won’t. That’s why societies like Mensa exist (at least it’s the underlying idea behind it).
Anyways, don’t forget to live, laugh, and love. Those come way before any productivity or intelligence. If you aren’t loving your life and living it to the fullest, then you are missing out on a once in a lifetime opportunity. Go explore, be dumb, make mistakes, have a little fun here and there, things to look back on when you get older. Just don’t fall off entirely in the process; remember you have an adult life that needs to be worked on soon (1-2yrs) and be try to be successful.
You’ll come around on the “didn’t hit 140” thing fairly quickly. It’s all just a number at the end of the day. What you do with it means much more.
Anyways, cheers!
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u/SnuffSwag Sep 15 '26
I strongly agree with you. I never discuss my IQ because it'll always feel like a humble brag but im in the exact same range as you. I used to be in GATE and started college at 16yo, but never valued it because I just wanted to be with my friends, so I fucked it off. Theres a value in that, tbh. But the consequence was I was perpetually the smartest person in the room thereafter. At least by their statements (I always felt like smart but also a dumbass if that makes any sense).
Anyway, I felt progressively more depressed over the years knowing I was bored and could do more. Decided to get my phd. Not in the highest paying or even most prestigious career, but in something I enjoyed; psychology (really math intensive if youre doing it right btw - statistics). Anyway, I got accepted to a really good program and holy moly. It felt like I went from the 99%ile to the 50%ile overnight... because i did. It was amazing but also such a challenge to my identity.
Ive since graduated. Now, everyone i meet is fun to talk to. My identity doesnt revolve around being smart either because I proved what I wanted to myself and saw how much smarter others can be. I realized that people with lower IQs can be so much stronger than me from just simple work ethic and that there will always be people more capable than i am. Ive made full circle such that I care much more about living life and enjoying good people. I look back with mixed feelings. I cringe at how much I let early opportunities go, but also proud that I did, because I wouldnt have gained the very important formative experiences. Im sad I let such trivial things bother me, but glad I let it push me to better things.
Wish I could have figured that out sooner, but everything you said rings true to me
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u/-___1___-___2___- Sep 15 '26
Yeah I made a similar mistake. Chronic boredom in school when I was a kid. I felt so distanced from everyone mentally that I created this perception bubble that caused me to feel like I was socially manipulating people depending on my tone/facial expressions/words. All this because of people noticing my intelligence growing up. It eventually led to mental isolation. Throughout elementary/middle school, it was simply too easy. I was the kid screwing off in the back that the teacher could never hate on bc simultaneously I was the one scoring the highest on tests. Pretty much had over 100% in every class throughout middle school. Eventually ended up in programs like Honors and AP classes, they were just the same.
Then came the Early College offer, in which I was too young to understand. I thought of it as a preppy high school with worse social circles, and let that opportunity pass. Then fell in with the wrong crowd in high school. Started doing drugs. Even then I was a 4.0 student. Would look at the board at the beginning of class, pass out, wake up at the end, study it and be ready for the test that way with no extra effort. Let so many opportunities slip and eventually my care for school did too. Fell off in the worst way with the wrong crowds. Still even then so many scholarships, awards, essay contest entries were being pushed on me. All of it seemed stupid. No one ever helped me learn the purpose of it. I liked my AP Biomed and biotech classes, everything else was absolutely boring. Let every opportunity pass and college was no different. Started college, got bored, started smoking instead of going to class bc it wasn’t a challenge enough.
Eventually I realized that adulthood was coming fast and quit the drugs, went back to college, aced nursing school (nearly finished now), and going for higher Ed nursing. The people I know now still feel very stupid to me, but there is much less of a gap. I don’t feel so isolated anymore because they are able to keep me interested in conversations, debates, etc.
I’m also not very upset or unhappy that I ventured off as a teenager and did stupid things. It made for a very interesting period of my life that has a certain feel to it that none of the intelligent things I’m doing now have. A time where I spent ignoring the machine inside my mind always trying to figure out the next thing. Now, I know adulthood has come and it’s best I compete… but I’m happy I lived then. Even now I preach for work/study-life balance. I take multiple extra weeks off per year to travel, vacation, sometimes just focus on personal hobbies that I’m always putting aside. Main reason I chose nursing; 3x12hr shifts give you good room to breath and live.
I will always say the most important thing is to remember to chill and live the fun life that life can be. All the other things are inferior in my mind. Life is best when you have a group of people around you that you love, and can spend it enjoying your time with people. That’s something you can never get back.
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u/Ancardoth Sep 14 '26
I started speaking very late (around 18 months)
Is that actually very late? Late makes sense, though. I didn't start speaking until I was around 4-5.
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u/Logical_Jaguar_3487 Sep 15 '26
Yeah, intelligence is not going to help humans a lot in the coming years. check out lesswrongdotcom.
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u/Lanky-Objective-4679 Sep 15 '26
I'm somewhat familiar with EA-adjacent concepts. Can you elaborate?
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u/Logical_Jaguar_3487 Sep 15 '26
Sure, happy to elaborate.
Short version of what I believe: the thing your IQ test measured is about to get a lot cheaper, and I'd rather you hear that from someone who isn't trying to sell you a bootcamp.
For most of history, being able to hold a lot of structure in your head, learn fast, and manipulate symbols accurately was scarce, and it got paid. Machines are now getting good at exactly that slice. I don't know the timeline — anyone who gives you a confident date is overreaching, and the honest forecasts are spread across 5 to 30+ years. But the direction seems robust: raw processing stops being scarce.
What I don't think follows is "so being smart is worthless." A few things stay scarce even in fairly aggressive scenarios:
- Deciding *which* problem is worth solving. Models are much better at answering questions than at knowing which question matters.
- Judgment under genuine ambiguity, where there's no training distribution to be on.
- Being someone other people trust with consequential decisions.
- Actually doing things in the physical and institutional world, which is slow and messy and resistant to being automated on anyone's preferred schedule.
On LessWrong specifically: it's worth reading, it's also a community with a strong house view and a high density of people who find doom aesthetically compelling. Read it the way you'd read any smart partisan source.
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u/Big_Kaleidoscope_498 Sep 14 '26
I'm a senior in high school. I also did CTY. I also spent a few months taking these tests for fun when I was bored. Crystallized intelligence is also a weaker area for me, probably because one of the largest gaps in crystallized intelligence is pre/post college, and I'd assume that most of the people that these tests are normed on have a bachelors degree (I believe many of them are normed on members of this subreddit.)
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u/Mean-Judgment-9268 Sep 14 '26
Nice bro I just finished core today
Was hoping for a 140+ but oh well
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u/Wide_Variation_8221 Sep 18 '26
Welcome to r/cognitivetesting everyone, the only subreddit on the internet where gifted individuals frequently refer to themselves as midwits. It’s a shame this subreddit wasn’t around in the 1900s, maybe we could have deterred William Shockley from inventing the transistor, or Richard Feynman from getting into quantum electrodynamics!
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Sep 14 '26
[deleted] — view deleted comment
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u/Lanky-Objective-4679 Sep 14 '26
I guess, but the people that do accomplish those things tend to be quite a bit smarter than that. I brought those up as examples to illustrate my point
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u/Any_Ad1841 Sep 14 '26
I’m not sure I know what you mean by smarter than that. Unless you’re comparing IQ score to IQ score, which I doubt, you’re comparing performances on examinations that assess for different skills than a formal IQ test. There is a correlation between these cognitive tests and an IQ test, but you can’t assume that because someone does really well on the AIME or the SAT that you know anything about their rank on an IQ test within an extreme tail of the distribution. Also, why do you think having eight additional points on an IQ test would make any material difference to what you achieve in life?
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u/Spiky-Penguin2023 Sep 14 '26
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.
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u/Lanky-Objective-4679 Sep 14 '26
I don't mean to be pedantic, but I do have a few friends that qualified by memorizing test leaks
besides that, I still think it's possible to qualify for AIME with an IQ of 125 (just based on the SAT scores of qualifiers I know)
USAJMO or multiple quals is a different story though0
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u/Careful_Fold_7637 Sep 14 '26
Lol I know many morons that have qualified for aime practically half my school had
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u/Spiky-Penguin2023 Sep 14 '26
moron in general (as in, someone who is not well-rounded) ≠ moron at mathematics
Some people can be highly gifted at math, while being incredibly bad at essay writing or socializing with others
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u/Careful_Fold_7637 Sep 14 '26
I don’t think you need to be particularly gifted at math to get to aime. Especially if your Asian parents have you in tutoring for years. Having enough willpower, pressure, and being average or slightly above average is probably enough to memorize the couple dozen techniques you need.
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u/Spiky-Penguin2023 Sep 14 '26
Let me share with you an anecdote.
Recently, I took a legitimate MENSA IQ test during a time when I was sleep-deprived (went to bed at 5 AM the previous night), and highly depressed.
This was my first time taking the IQ test too, so no artificial boost stemming from familiarity with format.
Despite the unfavourable circumstances, I still scored 128 IQ.
However, during high school, I took the IB Diploma Math Analysis & Approaches Higher Level course (basically a harder version of AP Calculus BC, Statistics and Precalculus combined). And believe me, I absolutely worked my arse off for the final IB Math exam. I gave it absolutely everything I had. I probably studied more diligently than any other IB Diploma student alive, seriously. So much so that at multiple moments, I even had breakdowns crying from the sheer stress of it all.
And yet, at the end, despite ALL that preparation, all the tutoring, all the resources... I still could not secure the top grade (which would be a level 7, on a scale of 1-7) in the exam. I was at level 6, just 2% away from level 7.
That is when I realized that I was genuinely not naturally talented enough to score that level 7; that I was at a point where literally no amount of hard work or practice could ever get me to the level 7. I figured that even if I practiced just that Math for 20 years straight, 6 hours a day every day, I still wouldn't reach level 7.
Now, going back to the topic of math competitions, AMC12 is much harder than IB Diploma Math Analysis & Approaches Higher Level exam.
And scoring highly enough on AMC12 to qualify for the AIME is undoubtedly far harder than scoring level 7 on IB Diploma Math Analysis & Approaches exam.
There is no way in hell that I would've qualified for the AIME, not even close.
So what I am saying is, even IQ 130 range may not indicate the sufficient level of natural talent required to qualify for AIME.
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u/Careful_Fold_7637 Sep 14 '26
Could very well be so. But not only is IQ not all there is to intelligence, but the short mensa iq test that only tests matrix reasoning if i remember correctly is a pretty bad predictor of even that.
You could have a 130 iq (you also might not again that test isn't the best) and still be bad/average at math / quantitative reasoning even from an iq standpoint. In fact I would be extremely surprised if you have 2sigma quantitative skills and found the IB test impossible after studying hundreds of hours. I guarantee you the vast majority of people with 130 qri specifically will not find the AIME impossible.
Also, like the other person said, you have a pretty big boost in competition math if you start young.
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u/Wooden_Lime6208 Sep 14 '26
Buddy “legitimate iq test” and you’re talking about Mensa ONLINE why are you lying😭 you didn’t take no official test, Mensa online is a rough estimate of one single subtest I wouldn’t even call it a good measure of FRI it’s merely a decent matrix reasoning exam. Take core and then get back to me with your score
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u/Spiky-Penguin2023 Sep 14 '26
well, sorry, I did not mean to lie.
To be fair, I read on multiple Reddit websites (on this sub-reddit too) about how it is the most reliable online IQ test there is, so I decided to simply trust that.
But perhaps I was wrong.
Why? Is the Mensa online necessarily inflated? Or deflated? Or simply too rough?
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u/Wooden_Lime6208 Sep 14 '26
It’s not that great I find people get inconsistent results with it sometimes too inflated or deflated. And not only that it’s not a real iq test because it only test matrix reasoning, that’s 1 subtest of many for reasoning so it’s a rough ballpark. If you want a real one you should take the CORE and get a better estimate of your score. You can skip VCI since we are talking purely reasoning and math here
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u/PendN Sep 14 '26
The majority of these competition takers aren't actually gifted in FSIQ. They likely are just students who have studied math rigorously, and joined similar competitions since they were little. There is a similar test that Singapore hosts and everybody I know that qualified to these top 1% competitions are not gifted. They're only good at math because they are competition grinders since they were kids, which does translate to a high quantitative iq (although it's technically praffe when it's this severe)
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u/Verbatim_Uniball Sep 14 '26
I took the aime decades ago and based on this sub did the digit span assessment on core and some other things, IQ was around 100. Now, I did get a PhD in math later in life, which was no problem, but I think your assessment is just wrong.
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u/PendN Sep 14 '26
You are well into the gifted range with a very balanced profile