ESPN.com has a sample test.
I scored a fifteen out of fifteen in about 4.5 minutes, I admit I had to actually scribble out 13 on a sheet of paper and would have had it wrong if I hadn’t double checked my math.
In case some of you are unfamiliar with the test, it is given to football players who intend to be drafted - so prospective teams can guage the players intellect.
Many famous players have done very poorly on the test, (full test is 50 questions).
Every year a handfull of top draft choices will get anywhere from 5-15 on the test. Only one guy has ever aced it. The average test score is about 22.
Plexico Burress scored a 9 on the WT and his coaches were concerned whether or not he would be able to understand the play book. 
Generally, if a quarterback writes less than a 20 then red flaggs go up. Other skill positions don’t matter as much.
Take the sample test and see what you think.
If anyone can link to a full 50 question sample test I’d like to see it.
Unreal…I could’ve sworn I aced it in under three minutes, but the answer key said I got #4 wrong. I double-checked, and decided I was correct. I triple-checked, and decided I was correct. I quadruple-checked…and found that I apparently have a problem distinguishing “ie” from “ei”. :smack:
There has long been talk about how easy many of the questions are, but I’ve always thought that this was intentional. Football is a fast-paced game, and the point of the Wonderlic is to test your quick-thinking ability.
As for finding a copy of the full 50-question test, I’ll be pleasantly surprised if one turns up. I’ve been looking for years – apparently they keep the real ones quite secretive.
A couple of the questions (4 and 5) look to be designed to detect dyslexia.
So does this mean that because I know that September is the 9th month of the year I’m qualified to run an offense next year?
I’ve always been interested in finding a copy of the full version. Is it a timed exam? I can only assume so, given that it allegedly is to test quick-thinking ability, but lord, this is third-grade stuff.
Remember Dexter Manley, the ex-Redskins DE who played for 4 years before he admitted he had been pushed through (and graduated no less) high school & college (Oklahoma St.), only to come out and admit that he was illiterate. So I’m not going to put a whole lot into a test that either the coaches don’t give a damn about the results, or that is so easy an illiterate person can sucessfully pass. The man was a great football player until his illiterate ass got addicted to crack and got kicked out of the league. Secretary of Defence indeed, Donald Rumsfeld may be clueless about Osama Bin Laden, but at least he can read. And I’m a 'Skins fanboy.
I would be very disappointed by any high school student that missed more than two or three of those. I went too fast and got sloppy and missed one. Annoyingly enough, it was the typesetting one, and I do that kind of analysis all the time.
I got that one wrong too! I confess, it was a stupid pride thing because I had decided that I would do everything in my head. 
Yeah, and I wasn’t trying for an “exactly” solution. I do this kind of stuff in the real world, and you can always fill up extra space on a page with pull quotes, increased leading, longer author bios, and so forth. I did a “head estimate” and came up with a solution that leaves the last page about 1/2 full and figured it would work.
When I saw the answer, I went back and realized I’d approached it wrong. Oh, well.
I got them all right, but then again, I’m a math tutor.
I believe when they take the wonderlic test, they are given 12 minutes for 50 questions.
So, they need to average under 15 seconds per question. The questions are easy, but you need to make a judgment call about answering more questions quickly, or answering fewer questions correctly.
I read a story recently about a guy who finished it in 9 minutes. I can’t recall who it was though, maybe Alex Smith.
OK, math guy, what’s the equation I should have used for this problem?
I did it (I’m sure) the long way.
I took 48000/2400 and came up with 20 pages. Since I couldn’t use either type set to fill in the last page (not enough room) I chose to go with the bigger size (since we had to mix the two, I assume). The bigger size is 600 less than the smaller size and since I didn’t need to add more words just more pages and since 1800 is 3/4 of 2400 I had to subtract 3 pages of 2400 text and add four of 1800 text to get to 21. --Uncommon sense, hence the username 
I think I got lucky.
What is the correct way to figure this?
x = # of 2400 word pages
y = # of 1800 word pages
x + y = 21
y = 21 - x
2400x + 1800y = 48000
2400x + 1800(21 - x) = 48000
2400x + 37800 - 1800x = 48000
600x = 10200
x = 17
Did OSU actually give Manley’s illiterate ass a diploma?
I think they may also have tests that check things like running & passing.
Rats…considering I can’t really do either. However, I do take comfort in knowing that despite my pauper-like financial state and total lack of athletic talent, I would have received a high score in that test.
Is there some kind of weird moral ending to this story?
I thought that they got 17 minutes to do the 50 questions, although I could be wrong.
Former Cinci punter Pat McInally (Harvard grad) is the only person I recall who has ever aced it until this year. QB Ryan Fitzpatrick (also Harvard) nailed a 50 a couple months ago. The average NFL prospect scores a 21. As a standalone, the Wonderlic doesn’t tell you a whole lot. It is just one small piece used in recruiting. Some notable Great NFL players have done poorly on the test (Marino got a 16), while others who have done very well on it were total busts. (Akili Smith got a 38).
It seems like a lot of the high profile Miami players usually bomb this thing. Sean Taylor got a 10 and Frank Gore set the bar to a new low (or at least as far as I have heard) with a 6 this year, although some have speculated that he is dyslexic and has learning disablilty.
The average doper should score mid/high 30s and I’d guess that a lot of people around here could ace. The flip side of that coin is that I doubt any one of us has the ability to be an NFL player.
I had to administer the Wonderlic test to prospective employees as a condition of their application and interview at a company I worked for several years ago. I’ve forgotten some of the details, but I can probably tell you more about it than you ever need to know.
Yes, it’s timed. I don’t remember exactly how long, because it’s been a while, but 12 minutes sounds long to me.
There are 50 questions. The later questions are harder than the early questions, though not significantly. Most test-takers do not finish. (“Most” as in I saw two people finish all 50 questions over the two years I was responsible for giving it.)
There are many, many versions of the test, coded by letter. (Form A, form B, form JK, etc.) Presumably this is so you can re-administer a new version several times, if the need arises, without giving the testee an advantage in remembering questions.
And here’s something interesting:
There was no correlation between Wonderlic score and job performance.
The CEO (who was a complete and total prick) loved the Wonderlic, because he scored in the high 40s. He considered himself a genius, and the test validated his belief, so naturally the test was “accurate.”
The booklet says an individual’s score is supposed to be used as a “guideline,” not a hard-and-fast result, but at this company, if you scored below a 15, there was really no chance you were going to be considered for a position. This is borderline illegal, as I understood it. (This practice is only one of the slimy things the company did. The CEO went on to Enron.)
So after a year and a half of giving this test and seeing the results misused, I was, frankly, pretty irritated. I gave myself a quick education in basic statistical analysis, and then I used my position in HR to generate a dataset of employee salaries, job appraisal scores, sales performance, and other metrics.
With one exception, the correlation between Wonderlic score and every available measurable standard of job performance was nonexistent. The exception was in sales: the higher the Wonderlic score, the worse the salesperson.
The CEO shrugged and binned it. I left within a few months. And a few months later, the company declared Chapter 11.
Anything specific y’all want to know?