I'm highly intelligent

[commonfactors]

OK, clickbait title.

How much do you think about how intelligent you are (or aren't)? What's the view like from where you are? Would you choose to be different?

I've never tested but guess I'm about 125-130. It's a weird level: like being the best sports person in high school. Enough to make it an important part of one's identity growing up (well, mine. Not cool, but we're all anonymous here), but not rare enough to be genuinely noteworthy or impressive to anyone else. I think I'd choose to be much smarter if I could, out of curiosity or vanity, but I also think it might be quite a lonely life up there.

My IQ is 120, so above average but not amazing. That’s just one measure of intelligence though, and doesn’t really matter? No one goes round telling each other their IQ, and I never think about it unless a thread like this comes up on MN.

My IQ was 140 in my 20s (it was measured as part of a selection process for a graduate training scheme) but I'd say it's dropped significantly since the arrival of twins and now late peri. Having been tutored to within an inch of my life for grammar school, from the age of 10, I am good at those exams. I've also belted myself into the driver's seat of two cars that aren't mine in the last 18 months and frequently try to zap my front door open with my car key. So if I'm meant to be in the top 1% we would be doomed and I'd have to up my anti anxiety meds.

I remember some TV show where I scored the same IQ as Paula Radcliffe (125) but I have never taken the test. I do know I am smart in a reasoning way, but I am definitely not quick. Takes me forever to deliver my intelligently thought out guff, by which time everyone has moved on. I would love to be sharp witted more than once in a blue moon. But when I get there, perhaps I am the funniest person in the room.

There are so many ways to be clever I find the idea of scores a bit meaningless.

All iq can tell you is how good you are at iq tests.

I was always top of class by miles, 12* GCSEs and 4 As at a level then top firsts at oxbridge without breaking a sweat. BUT I have never felt clever and don’t understand at all why I did so well academically. I am middling in the workplace and always think other people are much smarter than me. It’s puzzling. Maybe I simply have a good memory and knack for exams.

Yes, this is the skill.

Intelligent enough to get a first in law at a good university. I still managed to get on the wrong train last week.

My guess is it’s a few things. Being smart and being confident don’t always go together, and being smart can also make you feel different. Plus if you are smart you end up meeting people who are much smarter (analogy: few people earning £20k work with mega-millionaires, but many people earning £200k do), so your frame of reference shifts.

Plus of course being smart doesn’t guarantee important life outcomes like health, love, fulfilment, but might leave you with the sense of something missed or some sense of fault if that doesn’t happen.

I think I’m more intelligent than the people at work for example but I might just be surrounded by idiots there.

Why not take a test then say what it is? Mine was very high as a teen, I was put up years at school and so on. Then my life changed completely.

I have not had an easy life and I did eventually get a degree. Lucky to have a decent level of intelligence and to be able to learn things quickly but apart from that it’s not helped me in life. I suffer from depression and MH based illnesses and it’s probably all linked as I overthink everything.

I’ve just taken a test whilst sick in bed with a thumping headache and scored 120 so guess I’m still ok when it comes to iq.

I'm curious about the psychology of folks who go around saying (even on anonymous forums) that they are highly intelligent? I have two PhDs and it wouldn't occur to me to do that. I would love some insight into why you started this thread?

It doesn't matter at all. It's what you do with it that counts.

There is no difference between someone with an IQ of 100 reading Mumsnet comments all day and someone with an IQ of 160 doing the same.

Took a Mensa test some 40 odd years ago out of curiosity and I was invited to join! But, given I was a divorced single parent at the time living off what was then called "supplementary benefit", I couldn't afford to join. But, the outcome gave me a serious boost in confidence.

Within a couple of years of doing a couple of OU foundation courses, I ended up going to university (uprooting the kids and all) as a mature student and getting a degree in my late 20s... - opened a lot of doors and put me on a lucrative trajectory wage wise for the rest of my life...

I was as well. Weird question but after uni did you get a random invite to a mi5 test day?

After I graduated, about a year later and I was a mature student, I did and went along and sat all these exams.

Now I’m in my 50s with plenty of time to think about stuff I find it all a bit strange tbh. I don’t know why they contacted me, what they wanted from me or so on.

sorry for the weird question I just think about it every few months as it was such a bizarre experience.

You can be intelligent with zero confidence. That’s me.

Did you sit the 11+ before going to grammar school? Some of the questions in that are very similar to an IQ test.

Very well done. My life story is very similar to yours.

you are intelligent but lack confidence, as do I.

Ah. Inspired by another thread. But also, I’m curious about other people’s interior lives (just as you are curious about other people’s psychology, too). We spend much of our lives there, yet can never directly observe where others are. That interests me.

That is a brilliant outcome. This is Mensa done right. I think it a shame Mensa’s almost always used as a status flex (mainly of the “I’d never lower myself to care about Mensa” type).

I was tested for Dylexia twice and the IQ came out either 121 or 124. They said because I have exceptionally poor spatial awareness that the IQ test wouldnt be able to get an accurate reading. I would say I am in that bracket of "bright" but was a middle achiever in school. For example I got 100% in the arithmetic part of the GCSE but a B overall- I am not great at showing my working though and I get into trouble at work for trying to solve the whole problem rather than just do what is asked.

My mum also did one (later in life) and hers came out 138. She definitely isn't above average intellegence and that is what made question the validity of the test. She isn't as stupid as her school made her out to be, but she absolutely not 2 points off of Mensa.

I would be very intersted to do an EQ test as well. I am very good at other peoples emotions but very blinded to my own so it would be interesting to see how that would effect my score.

What have you achieved with your intelligence op? That’s the main thing?

I’ve achieved nothing with mine. But I enjoy learning, reading, puzzles.

I have had some awful trauma in my life and been treated really badly by men linked to them thinking I’m cleverer than them. So knocked out of me so to speak :(((

I also remember my grandfather saying when I was little it’s such a pity oneneweagle got the intelligence as she’s a girl and it’s going to be wasted. It Doyle have been better one of the boys getting it. I was born in the 70s and that was the conservative side of the family. I’ve never forgotten that.

so I feel like I’ve wasted it so far. I don’t have a good career, I no longer work due to my health. due to my life experiences (which were just dire from my teens to my late twenties) I also had to turn down a place at oxbridge. This was after my lecturer picked up on my ‘capabilities’ (I was already studying for a degree) put me in touch with them and I had a special interview to be allowed to join mid degree. I get tearful nearly 30 years later thinking about the fact I didn’t get to study there.

I think it is odd to tell people how intelligent you are. But I think being ‘an intellectual’ (or claiming it) is slightly different. Enjoying the life of the mind, reading a lot, buying into a certain set of priorities.

I guess it’s a bit like claiming to be an artist. If they actually make art and it’s important to them, then it’s not a weird or boastful claim. If not then it seems a bit odd or deluded.

yes I had to take it to get into the grammar school. I don’t know what my score was. We weren’t told.

I did an iq test once and it said I could join Mensa. Did one last week and it’s said I was in the 8th percentile. As in the 8th stupidest.

7 percentile is apparently clinically stupid and heavily impaired whether that’s brain injury or learning difficulty 😂

so no idea OP. Not sure I trust these online tests.

I thought I was clever as a kid as I was always top of the class in primary school. Recently I've realised that being an October birthday probably had something to do with that.

In general I think I'm pretty intelligent, but more so in some ways and less in others. I suppose I wouldn't mind being brainier, but in the end I don't think it particularly matters. It's more important to have a big heart than being super smart. I could definitely improve on the former.