IQ Test for Doctors

Many medical schools test reasoning at the application stage. In the UK the UCAT covers verbal reasoning, decision making, quantitative reasoning and situational judgement. It also had an abstract reasoning section, shape-pattern puzzles much like these, until that section was dropped from 2025. The BMAT, used by some schools, was withdrawn after 2024.

In the US the MCAT tests science knowledge and critical analysis and reasoning rather than abstract puzzles.

• No medical knowledge is involved. Your clinical experience will not help, which is the point.
• Do not take it post-nights. Long periods awake measurably slow reasoning, and your score would reflect the shift more than you.
• Results are private and are not a fitness-to-practise measure of any kind.

You may read that doctors average 120 to 130. That kind of figure is not backed by a solid modern study, though medicine's selective entry means doctors are likely above average as a group. As in any profession, individual scores vary widely.

In a 1997 study in Nature, Drew Dawson and Kathryn Reid found that 17 hours without sleep impaired performance on a hand-eye coordination task about as much as a blood alcohol level of 0.05%, and 24 hours awake about as much as 0.1%.

For a timed reasoning test, that means an attempt after a night shift measures fatigue as much as ability. For a fair baseline, take it on a rested day off.