Hacker News Reader

Comment by dqpb | Hacker News Reader

People who do well on standardized tests of intelligence—IQ tests—tend to be more successful in the classroom and the workplace.

Where is everyone taking these IQ tests? In my entire life I've never come across one in the wild, just SAT, GRE, etc.

View on HN

I dunno, my dad took us to get tested at one point when we were in school, iirc I was ~130. Low enough to still be pretty common, high enough to feel the pressure to do something with it.

Then again, when I got to uni I was classed with people who scored way higher than I did and they were... I dunno, "intelligent" but not "smart". I didn't see any correlation between entry exam scores and subsequent performance.

I think kids get such scores when they are ahead of their age in areas of mental development. I think in my case, because of attentive parents who had me reading early, etc.

As I got older I realized I'm not actually smarter than other people, I was just a little ahead, and the false belief that I am somehow exceptionally clever was damaging in a number of ways.

As a high school dropout living in the blue collar world after some rough time as a teen on the street, having left home at 15, I'd long forgotten about the potential I once had in grade school. Years later when I decided to go back to school and get a degree, I entered the CS program. Despite great performance I carried the delusion that I was not nearly as smart as everyone else. I was also often the only woman in the class and deep down believed that I was inferior. I had accepted that hard work was my only real tool for success. But I truly loved the material and chose to get a double major in Math. I was pretty isolated from my peers and was completely unaware to what degree I was outperforming them. It wasn't for several years out in the workforce where I actually started to realize I was actually alright in the intelligence department and I wasn't just fooling everyone (although I still have my doubts some days...). Nowadays, I frequently find myself in disbelief of where I am now, what my career is, what I get paid and what my life is like compared to where I was headed many years ago.

My brother on the other hand was treated like a genius from an early age and was never really forced to work hard. Even when he failed, there was reasoning that he was just too gifted and he was bored and never really had to learn how to truly apply himself or grow. My dad gave him a job and eventually gave him his company when he retired that he ran into the ground. He lived with my parents until he was over 30 and now approaching 50 he still struggles with keeping a job.

I think about the two of us and how we were both led astray by our adults thinking they already knew what we were capable of. What you say about your experience being damaging really resonates to me even if I'm coming from the opposite side of things. I feel like I got extremely lucky that my particular set of experiences even if they were tough to live through allowed me to land on my feet.

You may have taken such a test in school without knowing what it was. Raven's Progressive Matrices is a common one that you may remember.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matrices

Some "gifted" school programs require an IQ test for admission, and I believe that there have been studies that show that the students who were part of these programs do better than average in life. I haven't looked into it though, so I may be wrong.

I was given one at around age 12 in school to see if I qualified for an accelerated program, and then another one around age 28 as part of a university research study (on user interface related topics) I volunteered for.

I'm not surprised if people are tested in grade school, but I suspect running into them outside of research after your school years is rare.

There's a correlation between SAT and GRE and IQ, you can even convert (with a +- error) see https://www.braingle.com/mind/iq/convert.php

We were given standardized tests every year growing up, then the PSAT and the SAT at the end of high school. So that amounts to a minimum of 12 tests just from the public school system.

They sometimes use them as a diagnostic test for various learning disorders, such as dyslexia.

As a dyslexic I have taken a couple all totally cold

Reply on news.ycombinator.com