How to Prepare for an IQ Test: What Actually Helps

Most advice on preparing for an IQ test is either useless ("eat brain foods") or quietly misleading ("practise every day to raise your IQ"). The research tells a simpler story. Preparation cannot raise your underlying reasoning ability in a few days. What it can do is stop you losing points to things that have nothing to do with ability: an unfamiliar format, a bad night, panic or poor pacing.

Here is what actually helps, what does not, and how much difference each makes.

How to prepare for an IQ test: the short checklist

1. See each question type once. Work through a handful of example puzzles so the format is not a surprise. This is the single most useful step.
2. Do not drill the same items. Repeating identical questions inflates your score without telling you anything new.
3. Sleep normally the night before. A bad night mainly hurts attention and speed.
4. Test when you are alert, after a normal meal, with your phone silenced and no one interrupting.
5. Read the instructions and note the time limit before the first question.
6. Pace yourself. If a puzzle stalls you, choose your best answer and move on.
7. Take it once, properly. A calm first attempt is the most honest reading you will get.

Can you practise for an IQ test?

Yes, but understand what practice does. You can practise the format: how matrix puzzles are laid out, what kinds of rules they use, how the timer works. You cannot practise the ability the test is trying to measure, at least not in days or weeks.

The difference matters because familiarity raises scores. Someone seeing a matrix puzzle for the first time spends part of their effort working out what is being asked. Someone who has seen five before spends all of it on the puzzle. A little familiarity therefore makes a score fairer. A lot of drilling makes it less meaningful.

Here are three practice items in the same style as the LifeScore test, from easy to hard. They are not taken from the real test.

For a full set with worked answers, see our IQ test questions and answers and our step-by-step guide to solving matrix IQ questions.

Does practising IQ tests raise your score?

Yes, by a predictable amount, and then it stops. The largest study of this, a 2018 meta-analysis by Scharfen, Peters and Holling, pooled 174 samples covering more than 150,000 people who took the same kind of cognitive test more than once.

Attempt	Average gain over the first attempt	Roughly, on the IQ scale
Second test	0.33 standard deviations	About 5 points
Third test	0.50 standard deviations	About 7 to 8 points
Fourth test	0.52 standard deviations	No further gain

A few details are worth knowing:

• Identical questions help more than new ones. Retaking the exact same items added about 0.37 standard deviations at the second attempt. A different set of questions in the same style added about 0.23, roughly 3 to 4 points.
• Figural tests behave like the rest. Tests built from shapes and patterns, like matrix puzzles, showed a first-retest gain of about 0.32 standard deviations.
• Waiting barely helps. Longer gaps between attempts reduced the gain only slightly.
• People vary a lot. Some gain much more than the average and some score lower the second time.

The IQ-point figures assume the usual scale with a standard deviation of 15 and are approximate. These studies used professional and selection tests. We have not published retest data for our own test.

Is a higher score after practice a higher IQ?

Mostly not. Several lines of evidence point the same way:

• When researchers tracked people's eye movements while they retook matrix puzzles, about a third of the improvement came from changes in test-taking strategy. Once strategy was accounted for, the remaining gain was not reliable (Hayes and colleagues, 2015).
• Retest gains tend to be largest on the parts of tests that measure general intelligence least well.
• Reviews of commercial brain-training programmes find that people get better at the trained games, a little better at very similar tasks, and show little or no improvement in reasoning or everyday thinking (Simons and colleagues, 2016).

So a score that rises after heavy practice usually reflects test-wiseness. That is why the best preparation is light: enough to understand the format, not enough to memorise answers. It is also one reason the same person can get quite different scores on different occasions, which we cover in why IQ scores differ between tests.

What helps on the day, and what does not

What you do	Does it help?	Strength of evidence
See each question type once	Yes. Removes the biggest avoidable penalty	Strong
Repeat the same practice items	Inflates the score, not the ability	Strong
Take the test a fourth or fifth time	No further gain	Strong
Sleep normally	Avoids a penalty to attention and speed	Strong for attention, weak for reasoning
Stay calm	Probably helps	Moderate; cause and effect is debated
Light exercise beforehand	A very small boost	Weak to moderate
Caffeine	Helps alertness if you are tired; no clear effect on reasoning	Weak for puzzle tests
Brain-training apps	No reliable effect on IQ	Strong
Years of education	Raises measured IQ by 1 to 5 points per year	Strong, but not a preparation tactic

Does sleep affect IQ test scores?

Sleep loss clearly hurts attention. In a meta-analysis of short-term total sleep deprivation, the effect on lapses of attention was large, while the effect on reasoning accuracy was small and not statistically reliable (Lim and Dinges, 2010). In other words, a bad night makes you slower and more likely to drift, which costs points on a timed test, even if your reasoning is intact.

The practical advice is simple: sleep as you normally would. Do not take the test late at night after a long day, and do not stay up cramming practice questions.

Does caffeine help on an IQ test?

Caffeine mainly improves alertness and reaction time, and it helps most when you are tired (Nehlig, 2010). There is no good evidence that it improves performance on reasoning puzzles. If you drink coffee every morning, have your usual cup so you are not distracted by withdrawal. If you do not, an IQ test is not the time to start: too much can make you jittery.

Does test anxiety lower your score?

People who report high test anxiety tend to score lower on tests, and a 30-year review of 238 studies found consistent small-to-moderate negative links (von der Embse and colleagues, 2018). Whether anxiety causes the lower scores, or both reflect something else, is still debated.

Either way, a calm setting helps. An online test you take at home has one advantage here: there is no examiner watching. Remind yourself that one attempt is one reading, not a verdict.

Does exercise before a test help?

A little. A meta-analysis of 79 studies found that a single bout of exercise gives a very small average boost to cognitive performance shortly afterwards (Chang and colleagues, 2012). A walk before the test is a fine idea. A hard workout that leaves you exhausted is not.

How to score higher on the day

• Start with the instructions. Note how many questions there are and how long you have.
• Work out a rough pace. On a 25-question, 12-minute test that is just under 30 seconds per item on average. Early items go faster.
• Solve before you look at the options. On matrix puzzles, work out what the missing piece should be, then find it. This is linked to higher scores in eye-tracking research.
• Check one feature at a time: shape, then number, then colour or shading, then direction.
• Do not get stuck. If you cannot see the rule within a reasonable time, pick the most likely answer and move on.
• Answer every question. On most tests a blank is scored the same as a wrong answer.

How to prepare for the Mensa test

Mensa admits people in the top 2% on its supervised tests. To prepare:

• Try Mensa's free online workout to see the style of questions. It takes up to 15 minutes and is practice only.
• Consider British Mensa's home test if you want an indicative score before you book a supervised session.
• Use our Mensa practice test page for matrix items like those on many Mensa tests, with explanations. It is our own practice material, not a Mensa test.
• Do not over-practise. Mensa limits how often you can resit, so arrive rested and familiar with the format rather than drilled.

What actually raises IQ over the long term?

Education is the most reliable known lever. A meta-analysis of 42 data sets with over 600,000 people estimated that each extra year of education raises measured IQ by about 1 to 5 points, and the effect lasts (Ritchie and Tucker-Drob, 2018). Learning demanding new skills, reading widely and staying physically healthy all support thinking over a lifetime. None of them work in time for next week's test, and none can be crammed.

Common questions

How many times can you take an IQ test?

As many as the provider allows, but the gains stop after about the third attempt, and repeated scores become less meaningful because you start measuring familiarity. Mensa and psychologists limit retakes for this reason. Your first rested attempt is the most informative.

How long should I practise before an IQ test?

Fifteen to thirty minutes with a few example items is enough to remove the "first time" penalty. Beyond that you are mostly learning the test, not improving your reasoning.

Is there any way to cheat on an IQ test?

You can inflate a score by memorising items or taking a test many times, but the number then stops meaning anything. If you want to know where your reasoning really sits, take it once, honestly.

How long does an IQ test take?

From about 12 minutes for ours to two hours or more with a psychologist. See how long an IQ test takes.