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I basically was lead to this forum after doing some research on aspergers and autism and while not officially diagnosed, my close friends and the majority of my family seem to believe that I have aspergers and my friend who was diagnosed with high functioning autism believes that I indeed am autistic which was confirmation for me. So I'm currently a 19 year old sophmore in I'm perusing a bachelors and masters in nuclear engineering along with a masters in plasma physics. I'm honestly not sure if I should get diagnosed. It seems like traditional intelligence testing/standardized testing doesn't seem to reflect my performance in the real world (not to come off as a narcissist) however I scored around an 1800/2400 on the SAT and I scored about a 113 on an IQ test which is above average. This dichotomy though is that I'm extremely visual and hands on and I've loved nuclear science and plasmas since I was 9ish and I've built a few devices but I've seem to hit a wall in my interest of the subject. I'm currently taking a doctoral course in industrial plasma physics as well as a masters course in plasma dynamics and behavior and it seems like I'm just bored. I can comprehend the material however I literally don't want to take the time to visualize each and every phenomena as it's just too energy intensive. I'm not sure if this is due to depression resulting from bi polar disorder (I've recently been diagnosed with rapid cycling BPII as well as ADHD which I'm dealing with) and honestly I'm considering taking a gap year off from school so I can straighten out all of these issues. My current plan is to continue with my bachelors and masters coursework as planned and graduate in 4 years with both but I feel like I will burn my self out. Any advice will be appreciated and thank you for reading through this rant/string of barley coherent words .

I completed my bachelor's and master's in four years. I won't say I burned completely out but I was definitely glad when school was finally over. I considered doctoral programs but I knew that would be too much.

Taking a year off: For myself, I am rather sure I would lose momentum. My life experience has been that once I lose momentum on something it is quite hard (and often impossible) for me to get it back.

I wonder if a compromise or more balanced scheme might help. A reduced course load might free up enough mental and emotional resources to deal with the psych issues, while still keeping focus and progress on school.

At 19 it's really a personal choice. It sounds like you're a fairly successful person. It's expensive but if you have a perceived benefit, even if it's just "settling it", then you would want to consider getting tested. That's how I feel anyways.

I thought that above average IQ started at 115, making us high average.

IQ tests have variance of usually up to 10 points usually so his IQ could be as low as 103 and as high as 123. I've scored between 124 and 134, but I'm usually put in the borderline high-average/gifted range. A result from one test does not imply that's the exact number it is.