— IQ test methodology
GRE General Test: Graduate Record Examination
Graduate admissions test. Verbal and Quantitative sections correlate ~0.85 with WAIS IQ — effectively an IQ proxy.
What GRE General Test measures
→Pause. Find out YOUR IQ before you keep reading.GRE General Test is a educational cognitive assessment for graduate school, published by ETS. Like all standardized IQ instruments, scores follow a normal distribution with mean 100 and standard deviation 15 (Wechsler scale), allowing direct percentile interpretation: a score of 115 is the 84th percentile, 130 is the 98th percentile, and so on.
How it works
→Curious how YOU score? 20-min calibrated test.The test administration depends on its category: scored on the test's own scale but heavily g-loaded; published correlations with WAIS IQ are typically 0.7-0.85.
Scoring and interpretation
→The numbers above? Find out where YOU land.All standardized IQ tests use a normed distribution: the test publisher tested a representative sample of the target population, ranked everyone's raw scores, and assigned percentiles. Your IQ score reflects your percentile within that normed sample — not an absolute measurement.
- IQ 130+ = Highly Gifted / Mensa cutoff (top 2%)
- IQ 120-129 = Superior (top 9%)
- IQ 110-119 = High Average (top 25%)
- IQ 90-109 = Average (middle 50%)
- IQ 80-89 = Low Average (bottom 25%)
- IQ < 70 = Intellectual Disability range (with adaptive functioning assessment)
Strengths and limitations of GRE General Test
→Knowing about IQ ≠ knowing yours. Take the test.Strengths: Established norms across millions of test-takers. Predictive validity for academic performance is well-documented.
Limitations: Susceptible to test-taking strategy effects, anxiety, time-of-day, and motivation. Standard error typically ±5 points.
Frequently asked
→Stop reading. Start testing →Who administers GRE General Test?
Trained administrators in the relevant setting (school, employer, military, etc.). Some forms can be self-administered for self-knowledge purposes.
Is GRE General Test accepted by Mensa?
Mensa accepts a list of approved supervised tests. Check Mensa International's current accepted tests list; many Wechsler and Stanford-Binet results qualify.
How does GRE General Test compare to online tests?
Online IQ tests like Core Brain use the same statistical framework (deviation IQ, mean 100 SD 15) and most are calibrated against normed distributions. They are not clinically diagnostic but approximate professionally administered tests reasonably well for healthy adults.
Other educational tests
→Pause. Find out YOUR IQ before you keep reading.Related reading
→Curious how YOU score? 20-min calibrated test.Sources: Kaufman, A. S. (2009), IQ Testing 101; Flanagan, D. P. & Harrison, P. L. (2018), Contemporary Intellectual Assessment.
Take a calibrated IQ test now →