IQ 104

About 68% of people score between 85 and 115, and 104 sits inside that range, 4 points above the exact midpoint of 100. Around 61% of people score at or below 104 and 39% score higher. It sits 4 points past the 100 mark and 11 short of 115.

Average is not a polite word for mediocre. It is where the test is designed to place the typical adult, and it is the level that most schooling, jobs and everyday tasks are built around.

Scores near the middle of the curve are the most precisely measured, because tests have the most data there. A 104 is one of the more trustworthy numbers an IQ test can give you.

Put 104 next to 100 and the difference is 0.27 of a standard deviation. On timed abstract puzzles that shows as being a touch quicker or more accurate; outside the test, other things matter far more.

Most jobs, including skilled and professional ones, are done well by people right across this range. Employers select on experience, reliability and communication far more than on any test score.

Being in the average range says nothing about ambition. Careers, qualifications and creative work are open across it, and many people in it are highly skilled in their field.

Two people who both score 104 can have very different strengths underneath. These habits help whichever pattern you have:

• Lean on structure. Checklists, notes and routines free up working memory for the hard part of a problem.
• Go deep in one area. Expertise lets people reason quickly in their own field whatever their overall score.
• Play to your pattern. If visual puzzles felt easier than number ones, that is useful information about how you learn.

Scoring 104 or higher is a 39% share of everyone. Scaled up to whole populations, that works out as:

Near the middle of the curve, rarity barely changes from point to point. About 39% of people score 104 or higher, compared with 53% at 99 and 27% at 109.

What your 104 could really be. Treat any single score as the centre of a range. For a good supervised test, about 5 points either side is typical, so 104 really means somewhere from 99 to 109. Online tests are less precise than that.

Which scale was it on? Close to 100, it barely matters. Even on an SD 24 scale, a 104 converts to about 103 on the usual SD 15 scale, so you can compare it with this page almost directly.

Nobody famous has a verified IQ in most cases, and retrospective estimates are only made for a narrow group.

The estimates on our historical profiles run from 115 to 250, so none lands close to 104. Historians only estimate IQs for people who did something extraordinary, which skews the list. It says nothing about what famous people could actually score.

Our degree, university and job profiles carry rough IQ benchmarks. These are the ones within a few points of 104. The education figures are derived from admissions-test averages, not from IQ testing.

The scores one and five points either side of 104, plus the round numbers from 100 to 150, side by side. Tap any score for its full page.

People with an IQ of 104 typically score about 1050 on the SAT and about 19 on the ACT composite. Scores vary a lot from person to person, so the range shows where about four in five land.