IQ 116

Only about 1 in 7 people score 116 or higher. That puts you 1 point into the band between one and two standard deviations above the mean, where this site uses the label High Average.

This is a common range among people in academic and professional work, but it is far from a requirement. Plenty of people outside it do the same jobs well.

Most people at 116 were never labelled gifted at school, and many never took a formal test. It is the kind of score people underrate because it does not come with a label.

A 116 does not point to one career. The more solid finding, from meta-analyses such as Schmidt and Hunter (1998), is that reasoning ability helps most in jobs with a lot of new information to absorb.

Where you end up depends heavily on interest, persistence and people skills. None of those is measured by an IQ test.

If you are choosing a path, treat 116 as a reason to take on demanding material, not as a filter on which options are open to you.

At 116, the edge over average is 16 points. In everyday terms it is subtle and shows up in small ways:

• New tools and apps feel intuitive faster, because you infer how they work.
• Slow explanations can feel tedious, and you may prefer to skip ahead.
• Skills such as writing, coding or playing an instrument still take years of practice to master.

On a bell curve with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, about 14% of people score 116 or higher. Applied to whole populations:

An IQ of 116 or higher is 1.6 times rarer than 111 or higher, and 121 or higher is 1.8 times rarer again. At this point on the curve, each extra point makes a score about 11% rarer.

What your 116 could really be. Even a good supervised test has a margin of error of roughly 5 points either side. A true score anywhere from 111 to 121 would be consistent with a 116, which spans the 76.8th to the 91.9th percentile. Short online tests have wider margins.

Which scale was it on? Score reports do not always say. On the common SD 15 scale your 116 stands as it is. If the report used SD 16 it equals about 115, and if it used SD 24 about 110. The percentile follows the converted number.

Retrospective estimates for historical figures rarely go this low, because they are only made for people with exceptional achievements. A few sit near 116. None of these are test scores. They are estimates from biographical evidence, and each profile explains its basis.

Rough benchmarks from our profiles that sit within a few points of 116. Degree and university figures are estimates derived from admissions-test averages, not measured IQs.

The scores one and five points either side of 116, plus the round numbers from 100 to 150, side by side. Tap any score for its full page.

People with an IQ of 116 typically score about 1220 on the SAT and about 23 on the ACT composite. Scores vary a lot from person to person, so the range shows where about four in five land.