IQ 98

If you lined up 100 random adults by score, a 98 would put you at about position 45 from the bottom. That is inside the 85 to 115 band that roughly 46 million people in the UK share.

Within this range, scores a few points apart are closer together than the test's own margin of error. A 95 and a 101 could easily be the same person on different days.

Most of the difference between people with average scores comes from other things: knowledge, experience, habits and how often they practise the kind of thinking a task needs.

The 2-point gap between 98 and 100 is about the size of the test's own margin of error. You would not spot it in a conversation or at work.

Where a score like this shows is mainly in speed on unfamiliar, timed problems. Given time, familiar material and a clear goal, people across the average range reach the same answers.

School results in this range depend heavily on teaching, effort and interest. The same score turns up in students with top grades and in students who struggle.

An overall 98 can hide a very uneven profile. Two people with the same total can be strong at quite different things, so the useful question is which kinds of question went well for you.

• Lean on structure. Checklists, notes and routines free up working memory for the hard part of a problem.
• Give unfamiliar problems time. Speed is where average scores differ most, and most real decisions are not timed.
• Protect sleep and focus. Both beat cramming for anything you need to remember.

Scoring 98 or lower is a 45% share of everyone. Scaled up to whole populations, that works out as:

The curve fills up quickly towards the middle. Moving from 98 to 103 adds about 13 percentage points of people at or below you, and moving down to 93 removes about 13.

What your 98 could really be. Even a good supervised test has a margin of error of roughly 5 points either side. A true score anywhere from 93 to 103 would be consistent with a 98, which spans the 32nd to the 57.9th percentile. Short online tests have wider margins.

Which scale was it on? Close to 100, it barely matters. Even on an SD 24 scale, a 98 converts to about 99 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.

No historical figure on this site has an estimate close to 98. Retrospective estimates cluster between about 115 and 250 because they are only made for people with exceptional achievements. That is a selection effect, not a sign that famous or successful people cannot score 98.

A few degree, university and job profiles on this site carry IQ benchmarks close to 98. Treat the education figures as rough estimates from admissions-test data rather than measured IQs.

The scores one and five points either side of 98, plus the round numbers from 100 to 150, side by side. Tap any score for its full page.

People with an IQ of 98 typically score about 960 on the SAT and about 17 on the ACT composite. Scores vary a lot from person to person, so the range shows where about four in five land.