So I (25M) recently went down the rabbit hole of taking cognitive tests. After reviewing my scores and previous tests, it lent a lot of clarity to why I succeeded/failed in the past and where I am today, and I wanted to share my interpretation.
Here are my scores (all of them are first try except CORE where I retook a couple of the sub-tests):
AGCT - 132
CAT - 130
GET - 133
CORE - 122 (127 VCI, 122 QRI, 110-115 FRIS/WMI/PS)
1980 SAT - 127 (132 Verbal, 120 Quant)
1926 SAT - 128 (123 Verbal, 122 Quant)
Mensa Denmark - 124
ACT (taken as a HS junior) - 32 (36 English/Reading, 28 Math, 26 Science)
Overall, my scores since high school are remarkably consistent. My FSIQ is probably low to mid-120s with spikes near 130 when I'm feeling good. It's heavily carried by my verbal comprehension and quant to a lesser degree, while my fluid intelligence is only slightly above average.
In college, I initially majored in economics, where I failed the pre-major. Looking back, this makes sense as my fluid reasoning is only 110-115 and economics revolves heavily around modeling. I remember going "wtf is this" at a lot of the test questions and material. That isn't to say I couldn't do it, but my ego was inflated from high school (which led to poor study habits) and I was out of my wheelhouse.
Anyways, after failing Econ, I switched to Statistics and Data Science. I was a Bs and Cs student in statistics which tracks with my quant scores being around 120. Basically just good enough to be average in college-level math.
In essence, in a controlled environment like university which revolves around brainpower, or competitive/narrow-scope work environments, the gap between average FRI vs. elite FRI, or even good QRI vs. elite QRI, becomes way more pronounced. That isn't to say you can't achieve the same results, but that you need to manage expectations for yourself and work harder accordingly.
At present, I work as a data analyst in healthcare where I use almost none of the stats I learned and the math is pretty basic. What matters a lot more is interfacing with internal clients, PowerPoint presentations, and creating dashboards/data pipelines to track KPls. My tech skills (SQL/Tableau) are solid and I can get deep with insights and understanding viewers' perspectives thanks to high VCI.
However, I noticeably struggle with creating novel frameworks to track KPls and I lose track of variables when building out data flows/Tableau calculations. This is where my weaker FRI/WMI comes into play. I would NOT be having a good time in a quant/fluid intelligence heavy role such as a data scientist or as a SWE.
So when people say 120+ FSIQ is good enough for anything, there is some truth to that, but the way your score subset breaks down matters a lot too. Maybe I could be a data scientist or SWE - but I would likely never be a top performer or make it into FAANG. Likewise, if I only had insane VCI and nothing else, even if I was 120+ FSIQ, I'd be looking at careers like law or policy which index heavily for that.
Anyways, I'm done with cognitive tests LOL. I don't really feel the need to drop a grand to get a formal one and for a psychologist to tell me things I can mostly figure out myself. l also think it's very easy to get wrapped up in these tests and glaze yourself (or on the flip side, give yourself imposter syndrome), and I wanted to anchor them to my real-world results - both the good and the bad - which are what matter most.