Month completed: March 2009

I have always been interested in the fact that your level of ’smarts’ can be identified by just a single number.

That number being, of course, your IQ.

Whenever the national IQ tests come on TV, or there is someone with an off-the-charts IQ written about in the paper, I am therefore interested.

But whenever I heard someone say what their IQ was, I had nothing official of my own, to tell me what mine was, for comparison.

There are the tests you can do on the Internet or with Facebook, but they lacked that ‘official’-ness.

There really is only one place to go to get your official IQ score – Mensa.

Not heard of Mensa? This is a club with only one criterion to pass to be eligible for admission – an IQ in the top 2% of the population.

The British Mensa club run regularly testings for people who want to test themselves, find out their IQ, and perhaps get a good enough score to make it into the club.

A couple of weeks ago, I went for my test. And I can tell you now, it was one of the HARDEST tests I have ever done. Hard both as in the questions were difficult, but hard in the speed required to answer the questions (there were over 200 questions to answer, with an average of maybe 30-45 seconds a question).

Here is an example of a question. Let me know what you think the answer is (I still don’t know):

Which of the following words is the odd one out?

- CHAIR

- CAT

- SUN

- BRIGHT

- HOPE

That question was a middle of the road in difficulty one!

After the test, I felt like I did OK, and started the two week wait for my results to arrive in the mail. My brain was in overdrive after the test, and Nat said I spent the night sleeptalking about puzzles and numbers.

Earlier this week, my Mensa letter came.

The test is split into two groups. The first is Culture Fair, which is an intelligence test that aims to minimise cultural or educational biases (basically, your ability to recognise patterns in shapes). And the second test has questions ranging from knowledge of English language to logic puzzles.

In the Culture Fair test, I got 124. This put me in the top 7% of the population.

In the second test (I wish I could remember the name of it), I got 138. This put me in the top 5%.

You don’t get a combined score unfortunately.

To get into Mensa, I needed 132 in Culture Fair, and 148 in the second test. So, considering I was, in total, just 18 points of Mensa, and made the top 7% and top 5% respectively, I am quite chuffed.

If you want to really challenge yourself, book yourself in (UK office here, Australian office here) for a Mensa IQ test.

As for the EQ test part of this goal, there is no official tester of the EQ, so I did this one on-line. The EQ is the Emotional Quotient is described in Wikipedia as:

…a concept that involves the ability, capacity, skill or (in the case of the trait EI model) a self-perceived ability, to identify, assess, and manage the emotions of one’s self, of others, and of groups

Being IQ smart does not mean that you will get the world served to you on a golden platter. If you don’t know how to interact with others, and be part of society, you won’t get far. So that is why it is important to have a good EQ, as well as IQ.

My EQ, from the test I did, was 112. The description that came along with is was:

Your Emotional IQ is in the average range. Essentially, you’re able to recognize and deal with your own emotions and those of others in a reasonably effective manner. This is likely evident in your ability to relate to others, express your needs, and maintain a satisfactory level of emotional health.

Not sure how much I will read into it, but there it is.

So, if you want to see how smart you are, or how in touch you are with your emotions, why not give an IQ or EQ test a try.