Average IQ of a dentist: no direct data

Dentists are missing from every occupational IQ table we could verify. The Wisconsin Longitudinal Study reports "medical occupations, MD or equivalent", with a median of about 120. Dentists hold a doctoral degree and pass a selective admissions process, so they may be counted there, but the study's occupation appendix is not published with the paper.

What we can say is how selective dental school is. Students entering US dental schools in recent years averaged a university GPA of about 3.6 and a DAT Academic Average of about 21, according to the American Dental Education Association. Those are grades and an admissions test, not IQ, but they show that entrants are a filtered group. Selection on grades and ability tests tends to push the average of a profession above 100.

The honest range is wide. Nurses sit near 107 and physicians near 120 in the same study. Dentists plausibly fall between the two or close to the physician figure, and no published data settles it. Specialists such as orthodontists and oral surgeons have no separate figures either.

The Wisconsin study is one US state, one generation born around 1939, and almost entirely white. Its IQ scale is anchored to Wisconsin high-school juniors in 1951, not to a national norm. Treat every figure as an estimate within a few points.

Cognitive load is Medium. That means sustained reasoning is required, not occasional cleverness.