Features and Problems of Wonderlic IQ Test

The Wonderlic IQ test, or Wonderlic Personnel Test, is a standard test that is used by many employers (including the NFL and TruGreen) to determine the relative intelligence of an individual. It has been in use for decades and considered by some to be an accurate measure of a person's intelligence. You, or someone that you know, may have at one time taken a Wonderlic test, regardless if you are they were aware of it at the time. The test format is simple and easy to understand.

The Wonderlic test is comprised of fifty questions, taken over a time span of twelve minutes. The test contains mathematical, grammar, and spatial reasoning questions. As the test progresses, the test questions will become harder, and harder. At the conclusion of the Wonderlic test, your correct answers are added together to come up with your Wonderlic test score. This score is on a scale from 0-50. A  person who is barely literate will score a ten on the test, whereas an individual who is of average intelligence should score at least a 20. Borderline genius intelligence is scored at 40 and above.

Problems With Wonderlic IQ Test

The main problem with the Wonderlic test, should you have to take it, is that it is just too short to be of much use. Simply put, the Wonderlic test attempts to determine your average intelligence as fast as quickly. This fast scoring can and does often lead in incorrect results. For instance, what if an individual is stressed for those twelve short minutes? In a normal IQ test, this is a small portion of the test-taking time (most IQ tests are approximately 30 minutes to an hour long). The stress of being subjected to an IQ test on some people will result in a sort of mental block that typically lasts at least a few minutes. This condition is called test anxiety, and many of us experience it whenever we take standardized tests.

Besides, the Wonderlic IQ test does not focus on the main intelligence of a person alone; it also attempts to measure your mathematical abilities. The problem with this is that even a fifth grader can add and subtract- what shows intelligence is breaking a question down into a mathematical problem. Since the Wonderlic IQ test does not allow any tools such as calculators, precious time is wasted performing calculations that frankly most people are not used to doing. Calculators are in common use today, and I'm sure that you use one on a weekly, if not daily basis. How can your true intelligence be tested on a Wonderlic IQ test when you are busy performing calculations that most elementary school students know how to do?

To add further insult to the Wonderlic test, you are also expected to know the definitions of certain words to make comparisons between the words' meanings. How is this bad, you might ask? It's simple- the Wonderlic test has only fifty questions. You stand against the odds with so little questions, that one or two of the words that you are asked to compare you might not know the meaning of. What this now means is that not only have you wasted time adding, subtracting, and multiplying- you now are stuck on a question that asks you to compare a word you have not seen before with another word. What do most people do in this situation? They guess the answer, just like they were taught to in school. The Wonderlic test does not punish you for an incorrect answer; it only awards points for correct answers. This means you can guess questions that you honestly don't know the answers to.

If you, or someone you know, is about to take the Wonderlic IQ test, make sure to remind them that time is of the essence in this test, and to practice their addition and subtraction, as well as multiplication and division. Not only does the Wonderlic IQ test require a cool head, but it also requires math skills that most people in a modern society tend to depend on calculators for. Even though the Wonderlic test was updated in 2007, it is still obsolete and ancient by today's standards.

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