First of all, I would like to wish you all the best for 2008 and thank you all for your interest in the 'International High IQ Society' hub.

I hope you had a chance to take one of the IQ tests on http://www.highiqsociety.org/ and possibly belong to the 'cream of the crop' ;-)

Please remember your IQ is not a fixed score. It is not something you are born with. Your brain is like your muscles - the more you exercise it, the stronger it will get. You can improve your IQ in many different ways, here are a few ideas to get you started:
- Do crosswords and puzzles
- Read books
- Look things up when you don't understand them
- Choose books, magazines and TV programmes which challenge you and encourage you to think about things
- Practice making your own decisions rather than asking others
- Play games (chess, cards, etc.) which require you to work out your opponent's strategy
- Take more IQ tests - you can improve your score by practicing - if you exercise your brain with similar types of questions, ...

If you ever took a professional-proctored IQ test (e.g. WAIS-R or WAIS-III), then you should be aware your full-scale IQ consists of a verbal IQ and a performance IQ. Each of them emphasizes a different aspect of general intelligence.

As you know, intelligence is much more complex than that and it cannot be summarized by a single figure.

Nevertheless, it is indicative of how smart a person can be. The IQ scores on the WAIS-III are normed to an average of 100 and standard deviation of 15 in the general population. This means that 95% of the general population would score between 70 and 130.

The Kaufman system for designating intelligence with qualitative labels is as follows:

130 and above: Upper Extreme
120-129: Well Above Average
110-119: Above Average
90-109: Average
80-89: Below Average
70-79: Well Below Average
69 and below: Lower Extreme

As you know, the intelligence level of individuals can be measured using an IQ test.

Numerous IQ tests are available online, but one of the most widely-used adult tests is called the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III (WAIS-III), a psychologist-proctored test.

The question you may be asking is how reliable all those IQ tests are and how they relate to your actual intelligence level.

Please share your experience on this controversial topic...