Almost everyone has heard about IQ tests. They’re in lots of magazines, especially women’s magazines. You can find them online too, just by Googling ‘IQ test’. You’ll get this page of questions filling your screen and you’ve got to select your answer online quickly. Enter the answers and the site will respond with an estimated score.

To start over, what is an IQ test really? And what’s the number mean? IQ stands for ‘Intelligence Quotient’, meaning how smart you are. It may be used to see if you are likely to do well in some proffessions or in academic studies.

The IQ test measures your intelligence to solve problems written on paper. What is measures is the ability to solve written problems. Your intelligence is gauged in respect to another person. It’s one of the standard methods to estimate human intelligence.

The average IQ score is 100. If your score is higher than 100 you are more intelligent than average. Any score less than 100 indicates your intelligence level doesn’t match up to the average John Doe.

Positive sides of the IQ test

• Hiring Let’s say you’re hiring someone for a new job. You could get a better understanding of the applicant’s intelligence by conducting an IQ test. The test could be on logical, linguistic and spatial intelligence. This should be guided by the requirements for the type of work offered. The results should give a clue on the suitability of the candidate for the position. Some candidates who would probably not be able to do the work could be screened out this way.
• Academic admission You could get potential students to sit for an IQ test to gauge their intelligence in addition to their SAT scores. This would be useful if there are too few places on the course to accommodate everyone who wants to study. You could pick the cream of the crop from the high IQ scorers and send rejection slips to those who didn’t make the grade.

Negative sides of the IQ test

• IQ tests don’t tell the full story Plenty of folks who have taken an IQ test as part of the interview process didn’t do so well at work. It is quite common that they do not climb very fast or high on the corporate career ladder.
• Other factors may be more important Many students with high IQ are a dissapointment when they hand in their term papers. Studies have found out that a student’s self-discipline is a better gauge of how well they’ll do at college or high school. Relying only on smartness is not enough you must put whatever IQ you have to work to do really well. Many high IQ scorers have been overtaken by so-called ‘weaker’ minds with much lower IQ.

• IQ does not measure everythingLeadership is one area which is not measured by IQ tests Another area not covered is your emotional intelligence, also called EQ, how good you are at handling other people and relationships. There is also the theory of multiple intelligences, that defines 8 different aspects of intelligence that you may have to varying degrees. Intelligence is so much more than a single score.