Is an IQ of 115 Good? What It Means, Percentile and Rarity

Updated 25 September 2026. About 10 minutes to read.

Is an IQ of 115 good?

Yes. A score of 115 is comfortably above average by any standard. IQ tests are built so that 100 is the average for your age group and each 15 points is one standard deviation, so 115 marks the point exactly one step above the middle. You can see how that scale is worked out in our guide to how IQ is calculated.

In practical terms, 115 suggests you pick up new ideas, spot patterns and work through unfamiliar problems a little faster than most people. It is also worth keeping in perspective. The difference between 110 and 120 is small next to everything an IQ test does not measure, such as motivation, knowledge, creativity and people skills.

IQ 115 percentile and how rare it is

On the standard scale, 115 sits at the 84th percentile. About 16% of people, or roughly 1 in 6, score 115 or above. Among 30 people chosen at random, you would expect around five to score 115 or higher.

So 115 is uncommon, but not rare. For comparison, scores of 120 are reached by about 1 in 11 people, and scores of 130 by about 1 in 44.

Percentiles assume a standard scale where the average is 100 and one standard deviation is 15 points, as used by the Wechsler tests and the current Stanford-Binet.

What 115 means on a professional IQ test

Psychologists use descriptive labels alongside the numbers. On the WAIS-5, scores from 110 to 119 are described as Above Average, the band just above the Average range of 90 to 109. Older editions, such as the WAIS-IV, called the same band High Average, so you may see either label. A score of 115 sits in the middle of that band.

A professional report also gives a confidence range, because no test is perfectly precise. In Pearson's published sample report for the WAIS-5, a Full Scale IQ of 111 comes with a 95% confidence range of 106 to 116. By the same logic, a measured 115 is best read as "somewhere around 110 to 120". The difference between a 113 and a 117 on a single test is usually too small to mean much.

Is 115 IQ good for a 13-year-old?

Yes, and it means the same as it does for an adult. IQ tests compare each person with others of the same age, so a 13-year-old who scores 115 is ahead of about 84% of other 13-year-olds, not ahead of 84% of adults.

Children's scores can shift more than adults' over the years, so a single childhood result is a snapshot rather than a life sentence. Children are usually assessed with the children's version of the Wechsler test (the WISC) rather than the adult WAIS.

Is an IQ of 115 good for adults, men and women?

Yes. Adult IQ is also compared with people of the same age, so 115 means the 84th percentile whether you are 25 or 65. The same applies to men and women: tests are normed on both, and 115 carries the same meaning for everyone. Research consistently finds that average differences between men and women on full scale IQ are small.

The "average graduate has a 115 IQ" myth

You will often read that university graduates average an IQ of about 113 to 115, and that a 115 therefore puts you at graduate level. That figure is out of date.

A 2024 meta-analysis by Bob Uttl and colleagues pooled Wechsler IQ data from university students tested between 1939 and 2022. It traced the "115 to 130" belief back to data from the 1940s and 1950s, when university was open to relatively few people. Across the decades, the students' average fell from about 119 to around 102 today, with big differences between universities. The researchers put the decline down to a far larger share of the population going to university.

115 IQ jobs: what can you do with an IQ of 115?

Almost anything. No profession has an official IQ requirement, and people with scores around 115 work in every field, from medicine, law, engineering and teaching to business, trades, healthcare and the creative industries.

Research shows why a number alone does not settle it. Studies from the long-running Wisconsin Longitudinal Study found that among people with the same level of education, IQ had little influence on occupational standing, earnings or wealth. Other research has found that people of very different IQs work in the same occupations, with a lot of overlap between jobs. Reasoning ability does help, especially in complex roles, but training, experience, effort and the right fit matter at least as much.

Which celebrities have an IQ of 115?

You will find plenty of websites listing celebrity IQs, including figures for Mark Zuckerberg and Kanye West. As far as we know, none of these people has published a verified IQ test result, so the numbers are guesses. The same is true of many famous historical figures. Our article on Einstein's supposed IQ of 160 shows how one of the best-known figures was estimated, not measured.

What if you scored 115 on an online test?

Treat it as a rough estimate. Many online tests are not compared against a representative sample of the population, and unsupervised or repeated attempts tend to push scores up. Our guide to whether online IQ tests are accurate explains the research, including how much a second attempt can add.

If you need a score for a real decision, such as an educational assessment, speak to a qualified psychologist who can give a standardised test in person.

Frequently asked questions

IQScore tests and guides are for education and entertainment. Scores are estimates and are not a clinical or diagnostic result. If you have concerns about memory, attention or learning, please speak to a qualified professional.