IQ 117: What a High-Average Score Really Means

What an IQ of 117 means

A score of 117 places a person 17 points, or 1.13 standard deviations, above the population average of 100. Modern tests such as the WAIS-IV and the Stanford-Binet 5 are built on that scale: mean 100, standard deviation 15. The number is a rank, not a raw count of right answers.

The rank is strong. About 87 of every 100 adults in the norm group score lower. Put 30 randomly chosen adults in a room and, on average, about four would outscore a 117. In a city of one million, roughly 129,000 residents would be expected at 117 or higher.

Both major test families call this range high average. The Wechsler scales place 110 through 119 in that band; the Superior band begins at 120. Our guide to IQ classification lays out every band.

How rare is 117? About one person in eight

Rarity climbs fast above 115. Each extra point removes a larger share of the population, because the bell curve thins as it moves away from the center.

The step from 115 to 117 looks small on paper. In population terms it trims the group from about one in six to about one in eight. The full ladder, from average to the far tail, is on our IQ rarity chart.

117 on other scoring scales

The same performance produces different numbers on tests with different spreads. A 117 on a Wechsler test corresponds to about 118 on older Stanford-Binet editions, which used a standard deviation of 16, and to about 127 on the Cattell scale, which uses 24.

That gap causes real confusion. A friend who reports a 127 on a Cattell-type test has not outscored a Wechsler 117; the two numbers mark the same rank. Always ask which test produced a score before comparing it.

Labels shift too. The WAIS-IV calls 117 High Average. Pearson's sample WAIS-5 score report describes a full-scale 111 as "above average," a sign that newer reports favor plainer wording for this band.

Is 117 a good IQ?

Yes, in the plain statistical sense: it beats the large majority of the population. What it predicts is a separate and more modest question.

The best evidence comes from long-term studies. Tarmo Strenze's 2007 meta-analysis in Intelligence, pooling longitudinal research, found that intelligence correlated .56 with education, .43 with occupational level and .20 with income. A correlation of .20 means test scores account for about 4 percent of the variation in pay. Strenze concluded that intelligence is a powerful predictor, but not an overwhelmingly better one than parental status or school grades.

School results track scores more tightly. Ian Deary and colleagues followed more than 70,000 English children and found a correlation of 0.81 between general intelligence at 11 and national exam results at 16; intelligence explained 58.6 percent of the variance in mathematics and 18.1 percent in art and design.

These are tendencies across large groups. They say nothing certain about one person. Effort, health, opportunity and temperament move individual outcomes a great deal. For where the "high IQ" label usually begins, see what counts as a high IQ.

Why a 117 is really a range

No test measures without error. Professional reports give a confidence interval around the full-scale score, and on modern batteries the 95 percent band spans roughly ten points. Pearson's WAIS-5 sample report shows the pattern: a full-scale 111 printed with a 95 percent interval of 106 to 116.

Applied to 117, the honest reading is about 112 to 122. That band crosses from High Average into Superior. A retest could land on either side of 120 without any change in the person.

Practice also moves scores. A 2018 meta-analysis by Jana Scharfen and colleagues, covering more than 150,000 test takers, found that a second attempt at the same kind of test raised scores by about a third of a standard deviation, around five IQ points. Gains grew through the third attempt and then leveled off. A 117 earned on a fourth try on the same material overstates ability.

How to confirm a score of 117

A reliable number comes from a licensed psychologist administering a normed individual test, such as the WAIS-IV, WAIS-5 or Stanford-Binet 5. The WAIS-IV, published by Pearson in 2008, was normed on 2,200 people, and its full-scale score shows internal-consistency reliability of .97 to .98. Pearson estimates about 45 minutes to obtain a WAIS-5 full-scale score.

Online quizzes cannot match that. Most are unsupervised, unnormed and easy to retake. Our free IQ test is a practice screener, useful for a first look, not a clinical result. Our analysis of whether online IQ tests are accurate explains the gap.

Scores near 117

• IQ 113: comfortably above average, the 80th-percentile range.
• IQ 115: exactly one standard deviation above the mean.
• IQ 121: the first step inside the Superior band.
• IQ 125: roughly the top 5 percent.

For the view from the far end of the curve, read what it takes to reach the top 1 percent.

Editorial standard: IQ figures for historical figures are retrospective estimates and are labeled as such; scores for living people appear only when the person disclosed them or a reputable outlet reported them. Corrections: contact the editors.