Can't pass the Wonderlic test? Top Tips and Techniques

The Wonderlic test is a pain of an assessment to overcome, and not just for first-time test-takers.

13:34 18 December 2020

Contrary to popular belief, those who fail the Wonderlic exam, even more than once, are not necessarily dumb or incompetent.

 

Based on its subject matter, nearly everyone that managed to graduate from highschool can pass it and even get a perfect score.

 

That is, of course, if they were given all the time in the world and didn’t have to worry about the pesky time limit as well as the fear of not meeting the minimum score needed for their college admission, job application, or NFL selection.

 

While you can study as much as you can and brute force the exam in order to pass Wonderlic practice test results expectations if you have access to them, in reality, there are a number of good tips and tricks that you can do to boost your score and even improve your testing experience dramatically.

 

In short, you don’t have to be a genius to pass the Wonderlic test, you only need to know how to tackle it effectively.

 

Let’s take a look at a few of these tips and techniques.

 

• Focus on the ‘easiest’ questions first

 

Alternatively, you should focus on answering the subject or subjects that are the easiest for you first, skipping over the ‘hard’ or ‘complex’ ones for later.

 

By doing this, you will be able to secure a lot of points early on, allowing you to spend whatever time is left on the more difficult questions in the Wonderlic exam compared to answering the entire thing chronologically where you can waste precious minutes on a single question.

 

The only downside of this method is that it is likely that you will forget which questions you have skipped over and thus be unable to get back to them when you’re finally ready to look over them.

 

As a result, you will have to be careful and remember which ones you skipped over so that you can return to them once you’ve already answered all the easy questions.

 

• Stumbled upon a really complex question? Skip it!

 

When you take the Wonderlic test, you will encounter a number of questions that are absurdly difficult to solve within 14 seconds, which is the average amount of time that you can spend on each question in the 12-minute, 50-item exam.

 

If you can’t answer them, don’t be discouraged as these questions serve no purpose other than to try and waste the test-taker’s time so that they will fail.

 

 

You read that right: The Wonderlic exam is purposefully designed to have ‘time trap’ questions!

 

In reality, however, their presence in the exam serves another purpose: to measure the test-taker’s critical thinking skills because they will have to choose between spending precious time on a single question or skipping it so that you can answer the many other questions that may be easier to do.

 

• Still not confident? Know that it is perfectly fine to…

 

Guess!

 

This may sound like a joke or a prank, but you are actually allowed to guess on the Wonderlic assessments because there are no penalties for doing so.

 

It should be noted however that this doesn’t mean ‘pick any answer that you want for every question that you are unsure of’. 

 

Instead, you should make an educated guess after reading through the question and the choices at the very least, especially when you’re facing a time trap question.

 

• For the verbal reasoning section, learn to skim efficiently

 

It cannot be understated that the time limit of the Wonderlic will be the source of most of your problems.

 

Considering the fact that the verbal reasoning section of the test will contain a significant amount of texts or even a full paragraph in order to test your reading comprehension skills, it is inevitable for you to go over the 14-second allowance per question rule if you don’t speed up on your reading.

 

While it is rare for time trap questions to appear in this section, since most of them appear in the spatial or numerical reasoning questions, it is not uncommon for test-takers to lose time because they spent too much on reading the entirety of the provided passage.

 

For short ones, this may not be a problem, but when you see a huge paragraph, it may be better for you to skim and then make an educated guess so that you can answer the rest of the questions.

 

• Don’t shy away from using Wonderlic practice tests!

 

Apart from the tips above on how to tackle the exam effectively, the last thing that you can do is to find and make good use of any online Wonderlic practice test.

 

 

These mock exams usually contain questions that are identical to the ones that can appear in most Wonderlic test question banks.

 

Most of them also offer to make you take a ‘timed’ version so that you can get familiar with the short time limit of the exam itself, allowing you to get first-hand experience on just how long you should spend on a single section or question.

 

Furthermore, there are practice test course providers that also offer a full overview on how to tackle each subject and question type so that you can answer each question as fast as you can without compromising your score.