If you’re applying to college to become a dental hygienist, physical therapist assistant, or a nurse, you should have known that you’d have to send in your transcript and a personal statement, but you may not have known that you had to take the Wonderlic College Entrance Exam.
The Wonderlic college entrance exam lasts only 12 minutes, but has an average score of about 40%. The test is so difficult, less than 3% of all test-takers actually finish it at all, and even fewer receive a perfect, or near perfect, score.
Designed specifically to trick you, the Wonderlic is not an easy test, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing. Not only do you have to pull from what you learned in high school math class, but you also have to identify strange patterns and manipulate three-dimensional figures.
The majority of test-takers fail to even answer half of the questions correctly because they don’t know what they’re doing. However, if you approach the test with the right strategy, you’ll zip through the questions and pass easily on your first attempt.
The Wonderlic college entrance exam, also known as the Scholastic Level Exam, contains a total of 50 multiple-choice questions, and, as mentioned above, students have a total of 12 minutes to finish the test. While the test is taken online, it is a proctored exam, so you’ll have to go to an assessment center to take it.
You’ll be given 1 point for each correct answer, and points will not be deducted. So the highest score you can receive is 50 points. The average, though, falls around a 20.
There is also a shorter version of the Wonderlic known as the Quicktest. This assessment is essentially the same except for a few minor differences. The Quicktest lasts only 8 minutes and contains 30 questions instead of 50. Plus, some of the questions are short response, and because there are fewer questions overall, each one is worth more points.
The Wonderlic was designed, unsurprisingly, by Eldon F. Wonderlic, a graduate student in the psychology department of Northwestern University. Our good friend Eldon was studying intelligence, and recognizing the importance it plays in everyday society, decided to take what he had learned and apply it to the academic world.
Eldon knew that intelligence was far more important than people had realized. Someone’s intelligence level, he discovered, could tell you an immense amount about what that person’s future would look like–the degrees they received, the jobs they earned, the salary they brought home.
With a surprising degree of accuracy, I.Q. could predict a person’s professional success.
So, he took this information and created an intelligence exam not for psychologists, but for colleges. With this test, academic institutions could screen potential applicants during the application process. This test would allow them to instantly gauge how quickly certain candidates would learn new information and how effectively they would implement it.
The Wonderlic test doesn’t merely test your ability to solve algebraic equations. It tests your raw intelligence.
Most people assume that it’s pointless to study for an entrance exam like the Wonderlic. After all, there’s no set curriculum. You can’t review flashcards, memorize formulas, or read over class notes. What exactly would you study for?
That’s where they go wrong though.
High scorers realize something that most test-takers never even consider. While you may not be able to drastically alter your I.Q., you can learn how to solve a puzzle. Whether you need to find derivatives or finish a sudoku, highly effective people know that you can learn how to solve a puzzle–and you can learn how to do it faster too.
After all, a world chess champion doesn’t win every match by guessing randomly and hoping for the best. He learns from the best and tries to pick up as many pointers along the way as he can.
The Wonderlic is no different.
How well the test actually evaluates intelligence is up for debate within psychology circles. What you need to know though is simple: if you practice, you can improve your score.
Why is this true?
The answer may surprise you. By going over practice materials, you won’t learn new material per se–you should probably be at least familiar with the vocabulary and any mathematical concepts you encounter. However, just because you’re well-educated doesn’t mean you’ll receive a high score.
The test, put very simply, is designed to trick you.
Wonderlic and his team were very clever, and he intended the questions to be difficult. If you read them too quickly, you could easily be fooled into choosing the wrong answer or working out a long equation when there was a simple shortcut all along.
Plus, since you have no more than 15 seconds on average to answer each question, you don’t have time to second-guess yourself. You could lose several points in one minute alone.
You’ll waste valuable time answering questions you shouldn’t have even tried if you have no idea how to budget your time correctly.
Many intelligent, ambitious, and highly capable individuals take and fail the Wonderlic not because they’re stupid, but because they don’t know what to expect.
That being said, you can raise your Wonderlic score up to ten points if you really take the time to study properly. On the Wonderlic, that could make a huge difference in your score. Ten points is the difference between a receptionist and an engineer.
There’s no better way to enhance your application than with a stellar Wonderlic score. If you invest even a few hours now reviewing the key strategies, you’ll save yourself a good deal of stress later.
A cursory review isn’t sufficient. If you want to ace the Wonderlic on the first try, you’ll need to spend time analyzing the questions and reviewing your answers carefully. Remember, you’ll need to answer each question in 15 seconds or less if you want to make your way through the entire test.
This is your chance to figure out what works and what doesn’t. This is your opportunity to find the shortcuts, tricks, and techniques you’ll wish you would have known. Don’t just skip past the questions you answered correctly. Return to them to see whether you could have answered them even faster.
Remember, the clock is your enemy here, and the quicker you learn to outwit it, the better off you’ll be
Answer: C
Be careful here. We can assume that, since it tends to rain quite often in March, there’s a good chance it’s raining now. After all, why else would you carry an umbrella? However, it’s possible that it recently stopped raining and that Jonathan still happens to be carrying around his umbrella. Also, we have no reason to believe it recently started raining. It could have been raining all day. For these reasons, we’ll have to answer uncertain.
Answer: E
Because the second half of the clause explains that Golda circumvented her boss in order to talk with the CEO, we can assume this information is relevant. While A and C are both possible, we have to choose E because we know she’s specifically going to the CEO to talk to him face-to-face. Perhaps she doesn’t trust her boss to communicate the message properly, or maybe she needs to convey sensitive information. Either way, we know it’s important to her that she tells him herself.
There’s no reason you should be afraid of your upcoming exam. If you take the time to prepare correctly, you’ll breeze through the exam in no time.
Still nervous? In our online Wonderlic course, we offer a comprehensive program for students like you who are looking for a bit of help. We discuss each of the 24 different kinds of Wonderlic questions and explain exactly how you should answer every single one.
We created this program because we wouldn’t want anyone to be turned away from their dream program because they bombed a test. We believe in you, and we want you to succeed. That’s why we’re offering an online Wonderlic practice test for free. Not only will it time you, but it will calculate your score immediately.
When you’re finished with the test, we’ll even let you watch a few of our Wonderlic video modules completely free of charge.
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