I don't think the person you are answering to is referring to IQ tests. Do you often have proper IQ tests when navigating in the academic sector? I personally

I don't think the person you are answering to is referring to IQ tests. Do you often have proper IQ tests when navigating in the academic sector? I personally never have one. On top of that, I'm not sure IQ tests themselves are really relevant to select people in the academic sector. They already have demonstrated they master their subject with their grades, so we already know they are smart enough, and it is not because someone score higher in an IQ test that this person will be more valuable for the academic sector, where collaboration and mentoring are as valuable as the holywood cliché of the genius solving all the problems. IQ does not tell much about laziness or motivation or willingness to follow the good scientific process, ... Also, at this level, you are selecting people amongst a set of candidates that are all already very very close in IQ, to the point that choosing on IQ alone is not making scientific sense: if the IQ questions would have been randomly different, or if they would have passed the test a different day, the scores would have been slightly different and the selection would have been different. The scores would not have been totally different, of course, but slightly different, and because the candidates are all very close, it would have changed the winner. For having been part of it, the selection process in the academic sector is very very very difficult and is very very prone to unconscious bias. When you have 5 very good candidates and you need to pick one, how do you decide? At the end, it is very often "on feeling": "for this person, I feel they will be a good match". It's a fair way of choosing, because choosing someone that you "don't feel it" over someone that you "feel it" is just very counter-intuitive. But it means that between two persons, it is often the one that "looks superficially the best for the job" that gets it, which is easily affected by unconscious bias (for example, you will "feel it" more easily with someone of your own culture), or can easily be gamed (for example, to progress, you need to build a professional network and manage your reputation, and some very good candidates are just not interested to play these silly games).