Wonderlic IQ test

From the Atlantic.

Robert Jones, a star linebacker from East Carolina University, went to a pay phone outside the 1992 NFL Scouting Combine—the pre-draft ritual where professional football teams take stock of the college talent—and called his mother.

“Ma,” he said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

A top scout, Dave-Te’ Thomas, overheard the call. “Robert,” he asked, “what the hell is going on?”

“That question really threw me,” Jones replied.

The New York Giants had asked him a tough one: If he were on a capsizing boat with his mother and daughter and could save only one, which would he choose?

Besides dashing forty yards, bench-pressing 225 pounds, and weaving between cones, would-be professional football players must submit to full psychological workups before teams are willing to take the multimillion-dollar gamble of drafting them....

With playbooks approaching phone-book heft, however, intelligence has become a key measure of NFL draftees. The standard measure is the Wonderlic Personnel Test, a general intelligence exam taken by 2.5 million people seeking all types of work each year. It was first used in the NFL more than thirty years ago, and it has since been adopted by every team....

The only NFL player to score a perfect 50 was punter and Harvard alumnus Pat McInally, in 1975. (Scores are not officially released, but the results leak every year.) Only about 1 in 30,000 takers gets a perfect score, according to a 1992 study done by the testing company. The average score for NFL draftees over the past twenty years is a 19, which puts them a peg higher than aspiring drivers, deliverymen, and claims clerks, but not quite at the level of quality-control checkers (19.19), food-department managers (19.14), or machinists (19.54). The smartest group, on average, is attorneys (29.67), followed by editors (28.84) and executives (28.70). The lowest scorers, all around 15, are janitors, material handlers, and, in dead last, packers. A 10 is literacy, according to Wonderlic President Charlie Wonderlic Jr., and any score of 12 or under means the prospect is likely to be “successful using simple tools under consistent supervision.” At this year’s combine it was reported that Texas quarterback Vince Young, one of the draft’s top prospects, scored a 6 on the test. His agent contested the report, but did confirm that Young retook the test and scored a 16.

The Atlantic has a sample test (pdf) and ESPN has a five-minute version.