I put this in this forum b/c it's not really that important. Are there any free IQ tests that are valid? I'd like to take one myself. I grew up in a place where my high school graduating class had 30-some people and not very many opportunities. Definitely no AP or gifted classes. I don't think anyone I ever knew had an IQ test.

I fit all the descriptors, sailed through grad school w/a 4.0, am pretty quirky (and sometimes hard to live with), but I want some proof. We have 2 gifted daughters and I want to show dh that it's not all from his genes.

I took an online one a long time ago but I have no idea whether or not the results were valid.

Do you remember your SAT scores? The SAT is highly g-loaded (especially the earlier version, which had analogies), as Detterman has found -- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT for references. There are SAT-to-IQ conversion tables online. The College Board is not honest about what its tests are measuring for political reasons.

Since you went to grad school, you can also estimate your IQ from your GRE scores http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/criteria.aspx . Several high-IQ societies accept high GRE scores for admission.

Wordsum http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/05/wordsum-iq/ is a short vocabulary test that you can probably find online . It is, arguably (see the link), an IQ test.

Thanks! I have no idea what my SAT scores were. I must be getting old.

I do remember that my GRE scores were not as good as I had hoped. I took it in a subject area (English - which is not what my graduate degree is in) and I was disappointed. (Am I remembering correctly? GREs are taken in a subject area?)

Of course, "disappointing" to me at age 20-something could very well translate into "very good" to my mid-40 perspective.

I'm certain I no longer have my GRE scores. I'm a major purger.

I'll check out that vocabulary test. Thanks.

Particularly true if you didn't, like today's generation, prepare for the SAT. I believe that College Board is being accurate - in today's environment where kids very often study for the SAT, and the schools teach to it as well, that today the SAT is more of an achievement test than an 'aptitude' or 'IQ' test.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

The GRE-to-IQ conversion tables are for the GRE General exam.

There is this raven's test, which has been discussed here a few times and the consensus seems to be that it is fairly valid.

http://www.clipsite.com.ar/HOME/Salud/Test/Raven/

you might want to search for the latest norms for ravens though

If you feel motivated, your grad school may still have your scores. I entered grad school in 1989 and they still had my scores in their files when I asked for them a couple years ago. They are not "official" but are good enough since you just want them for yourself!

Just a reminder if you do track down SAT scores and you are in your mid 40s, you need to make sure that you use a pre-recentering conversion chart. The college board re-centered the mean in the mid 1990s because it had dropped below 500.

When did the recenter the SATs? If taken in 1993 (I think, maybe it was 1992) would that be before or after? Not that I currently remember my scores but still...

The College Board recentered the SAT in April 1995 http://professionals.collegeboard.com/data-reports-research/sat/equivalence-tables .

Well that on that note - if you are mid-30s you also need to use the pre-recentering conversion chart

I am so glad that someone has asked this as I have been curious about myself since learning about my DD. I would love to know my scores but sure do not have the money to pay for such a test. The raven site is in Spanish... It looks like the test is a non-verbal test and it does not matter about the Spanish. There are some directions and I can not decipher them.... One thing I would like to know is how long is the test?

Use google translate. I believe it's 40 mins, there is a counter of sorts as you go along so possibly it will self terminate, I m not sure though as it only took me about 20. Note that you can actually go back and change things if you like, there are back and forward buttons.

Something I wonder about, but have been too embarrassed to ask is what people here think if the various attempts at high range IQ tests floating around the internet. I have never paid much attention to them until I stumbled across this guy's site when looking at my local Mensa website.

http://psiq.org/lux/

I have seen threads here discussing the need for DYS type kids to grow up and design and norm tests to differentiate at the tail. If people are already trying to make high range tests should we be supporting them or are they not to be taken seriously?

In the spirit of confession I did a couple of the tests from the link above and found them very entertaining but was surprised by how well I did on them which makes me skeptical. That said others I couldn't even figure out what the question meant! Although it did bring me to an interesting realisation that IQ tests in my experience do seem to be mostly exceedingly easy until you just can't do more. Binary rather than a sliding scale. Does that make sense? Either you can "see" it, or you can't. The Raven's test had two questions I couldn't get and I knew I was just guessing (and got wrong), there were a few that I had to think about a little but for the most part it was a doddle. The ones I did not know I concluded I did not know pretty much as fast as the ones I knew, I then spent some time trying to nut them out but it didn't really change anything...And that is pretty much what a I saw when watching my DDs do their IQ tests. In general they could answer fairly immediately or they could not answer correctly at all and thinking harder did not change things much (with some exceptions, block design takes a little time and checking for example).

Ok, I have gone off on a lot of tangents now. Sorry.

A link to the newer norms for the raven's

http://www.tedaltenberg.com/cabrillo/cis132/final/scoringmatrix.php

There is a 1995 book

http://www.amazon.com/Test-Your-IQ-Hans-Eysenck/dp/0140249621
Test Your IQ
by Hans J. Eysenck and Darrin Evans

containing eight IQ tests that one can purchase for $4 used on Amazon (which has many member reviews of it). Eysenck was a prolific British psychologist who wrote a controversial 1971 book "The IQ argument: race, intelligence, and education" and a 2000 book "Intelligence: A New Look".

Ha, it was a previous book of his (Know your own IQ) that my parents had kicking around at home when I first came across the idea of IQ. As a pre-teen I did all the tests in the book over the course of a year or so, getting numbers everywhere from 130 to 220 (IIRR). So I vote invalid!

I am honored to know someone with a 220 IQ.

Well, if there are eight tests, averaging the scores should reduce noise. From what I have read in your other posts, you are a math professor, and your son is profoundly gifted. I vote valid .

:-~ Around here you may well be, but it ain't me ;-)

The scatter was so great that my own conclusion was that one shouldn't trust any of the numbers at all. I'll accept that I used to be quite bright in those days ;-)

Mumofthree: you posted a link to newer norms on the Raven... I do not understand the age breakdowns. Can you enlighten me? Thanks!

Flower - Given the age ranges are given as .21/.71, for that to be a consistent amount of time for each column it's got to be .5 of a year per column and thus 9.21 is a decimal representation of age not years.months, so the actual age range represented by say 8.71/9.21 is 8yrs 8.5 months to 9yrs 2.5months.

Clear as mud?

My DD was a few days over 9yrs 2 months when she did the online Raven's test. So I followed the column marked 8.71-9.21 / 9. I think the next number, 7 for that column, is just a column label.

My son took the Ravens progressive matrix test through our nearby school district, given by a psychologist. They used a conversion factor which was published through the LA school district (I don't have the exact reference).
It does not look like the link that was listed above for the Ravens test, on the internet. I also looked at the test on Youtube that is in Spanish- I don't think the scoring is based on that.
The test is (I think) somewhat similar- the person/child looks at lots of squiggles and decides which one should come next. My 6 year old had to do 50 questions in 40 minutes or so. Kind of mind-numbing.
He got 177 (over the ceiling) on the non-verbal part of the RIAS test, and got a 99.1% on the Ravens test. I do not think the online tests you are looking at closely correlate with the "real" Ravens test.

Jack's mum, when researching some months ago, the various research articles I found on the ravens matrices which showed a few images of the questions did seems to be the same test. The children's version I found images of was also the same but with parts of question coloured, this is definitely not just a b&w copy of the children's one though as that is much shorter. There are a few different versions though I believe, so it is entirely possible that your son did a different one and the link provided is still legitimate. Or it might not be. The Internet is obviously not going to be a definitive source of iq testing.

After the test, I showed the online thing to my son who took it and he said it "sort of" looked like it. I doubt it's the exact same set of questions.
He took the Ravens Standard progressive matrix test. It did not use the online scoring system that you found.

Jack'sMom - I can't find the reference I previously found to there being multiple valid versions of the RPM, but wikipedia does confirm that:

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

"In addition, "parallel" forms of the standard and coloured progressive matrices were published in 1998. This was to address the problem of the Raven's Matrices being too well-known in the general population. Items in the parallel tests have been constructed so that average solution rates to each question are identical for the classic and parallel versions. A revised version of the SPM - the Standard Progressive Matrices Plus - was published at the same time. This was based on the "parallel" version but, although the test was the same length, it had more difficult items in order to restore the discrimination that the original SPM had among more able adolescents and young adults when it was first published."

So as I said in my earlier post your son quite likely did do a different test but both may still be valid. From what I can make out the version on that site (and also this site: http://www.raventest.net/ - edited to add this version is not free, when you get to the end it will try to charge you to give a result, so don't bother unless you are willing to pay 9.50 euro) are the original/older version of the Raven's, using the same questions that make up 2/3s of the CPM test, of which there seems to be only one version.

There is no version of the Raven's with 50 questions, the standard version have 60 questions (and parallel and plus versions), the advanced has 48 questions. Maybe he did the advanced version?

The link to the newer norms are just that, newer norms. I am not sure how you can tell which version of the norms were used on your son unless they sent a norming sheet home? I have chosen to look at that chart because it's a harsher scoring than the one that is used on the spanish version of the test.

But ultimately it's a quick and free test that gives you a bit of an indication, it's not a full psychologist test.

You are right- he did 60 questions in 35 minutes. He did the standard version.

I didn't read this part (maybe before the edit?) and did it anyway. When you get to the end, it has the 'pay part' but if you scroll down it gives you your numbers. I guess the full psychological report would have a breakdown of some kind. I was a bit surprised at my results.

Oh now that is annoying, I failed to notice there were any results at all. I only scrolled down far enough to see the example of the results they would send you and then closed the window. I was interested to see what their 2010 norms were like... The standard matrices aren't going to differentiate that well at the top end anymore past childhood as they aren't hard enough.

GeoMama,

When I just ran through this, it gave me a sample score report at the bottom of the page, not for my scores, but for a 10 yr old male with an IQ of 160.

If you were surprised at your score, this might be why...

LOL! I've closed the window now, but I thought it had an example at the top and another one below, but I could very easily be wrong. Which could be an iq test in itself.

Although this is an old thread, I thought I would share for future readers that American Mensa offers Mensa Admissions Tests for qualification to join Mensa. It is a relatively quick and easy way for people to learn their IQ score. While not free the cost is reasonable, currently $40.

First, you can practice on free iq tests.

For example here:
http://www.treningmozga.com/tests_iq_en.html

Then you can pass the paid iq tests.