Is 107 a Good IQ Score? And What the Number Hides

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What does an IQ of 107 actually mean?

IQ scores are standardised so that the population mean is 100 and the standard deviation is 15. A score of 107 is seven points above the mean, or a little under half a standard deviation. It sits in the upper part of the Average band, which covers 90 to 109 and holds roughly half of everyone.

Two points from the High Average line at 110, which as always is a classification convention rather than a cognitive boundary. The distance between a 107 and a 110 is well inside the error on any test, so the label change means less than it appears to.

The exact percentile for an IQ of 107

Using the standard normal distribution, an IQ of 107 maps to the 67.96th percentile:

In a class of 30, around ten pupils would be expected to reach 107. In a 100-person office, about thirty-two. Common, and comfortably in the upper third.

What a score of 107 can be hiding

This is the part worth your attention, and it applies more usefully here than at the extremes where it usually gets discussed.

A Full Scale IQ is not a measurement in its own right. It is a composite, averaged from index scores covering quite different abilities: verbal comprehension, visual and spatial reasoning, working memory and processing speed. Your 107 is what came out when those were combined.

Which means two people with identical 107s can be cognitively very different people:

• A flat profile. Around 107 on every index. Broadly even-handed, no pronounced strength or weakness, and the composite is a fair summary.
• A spiky profile. Verbal comprehension at 122, processing speed at 92, the rest in between. Same composite, completely different person, and the number describes neither half of them.

Clinicians take this seriously enough to have a working rule. The standard guidance is to subtract the lowest index score from the highest, and if the spread exceeds roughly 23 points, or one and a half standard deviations, the Full Scale IQ should not be interpreted as a single summary of ability at all. The arithmetic is still correct. It has just stopped describing anyone.

For someone in the middle of the range this matters more practically than it does at the top. A spiky 107 with strong verbal reasoning points toward quite different work from a spiky 107 with strong spatial reasoning, and the composite that averages them out is actively unhelpful for that decision. The mechanics, including the General Ability Index used when the spread is wide, are covered in our guide to an IQ of 127.

How much to trust a single score of 107

The WAIS-IV has a test-retest reliability of about 0.96 for Full Scale IQ, and the standard error of measurement is typically plus or minus 3 to 5 points. If you scored 107, your true ability most likely sits between 102 and 112, a band that straddles the Average and High Average classification line.

The good news is that this is among the most reliably measured regions of the scale. Standardisation samples are densest near 100, so the norms rest on more data here than anywhere else and different tests agree closely. That is the reverse of the situation above 130, where a handful of people anchor each band.

What it means for work and study

In Gottfredson's (1997) synthesis of the occupational research, IQ 110 is the point at which virtually every occupation remains accessible and people can generally learn a great deal independently from the standard university teaching format. At 107 you are just below that, which in practice means options narrow gradually rather than close.

Two things keep that in proportion. Group means hide enormous variation, so a profession averaging 112 contains plenty of people at 100 and plenty at 125. And cognitive ability predicts job performance less than the folklore claims: Sackett and colleagues (2022) revised the long-standing estimate down to about 0.31, below structured interviews at 0.42, which accounts for under ten percent of the variation in how people actually perform.

What to keep in mind about an IQ of 107

• Average by label, upper third by rank. The band covers 90 to 109 and holds half the population. You are near the top of it.
• The profile is more useful than the composite. If your indexes were uneven, the single number is averaging away the information you could actually use.
• Read it as a range. Somewhere between about 102 and 112, measured about as reliably as this field manages.
• It predicts less than you have been told. On current estimates cognitive ability accounts for under ten percent of the variation in job performance, with conscientiousness, skill and circumstance occupying the rest.

The bottom line on IQ 107

An IQ of 107 is modestly above average. You are at the 68th percentile, ahead of roughly two thirds of people, in the upper portion of a band that covers half the population. Three points below the High Average line, which is a label rather than a boundary.

The more useful question is not whether 107 is good but what it is made of. A composite averages several quite different abilities into one figure, and in the middle of the range that average is where the actionable information goes to die. If you have a domain breakdown, read that. If you only have the number, it is telling you where you rank and almost nothing about how you think.

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