Is 118 a Good IQ Score? What It Actually Means

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What does an IQ of 118 actually mean?

IQ scores are standardised so that the population mean is 100 and the standard deviation is 15. A score of 118 is 18 points above the mean — about 1.2 standard deviations. In plain language, you're well above average and sitting right on the edge of the range psychologists label Superior. You haven't quite crossed into it, but you're close enough that many psychologists would describe your cognitive profile as “borderline superior” in a clinical report.

On the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-IV, and the newer WAIS-V published in 2024), scores from 110 to 119 are classified as High Average. Scores from 120 to 129 are Superior, and 130 and above is Very Superior (sometimes called Gifted). At 118 you're one tier below Superior but meaningfully above the population mean — clearly in above-average territory without being unusual.

The exact percentile for an IQ of 118

Using the standard normal distribution with a mean of 100 and standard deviation of 15, an IQ of 118 maps to the 88.49th percentile — usually rounded to 88. The table below shows how 118 compares to its neighbours:

In practical terms: in a group of 100 people, roughly 12 would score higher than you and 88 would score lower. In a fairly typical office of 50 people, you'd expect around 6 of them to have a higher IQ than you. You're already rarer than most people realise — nearly 9 out of every 10 people you meet score lower than 118.

How close is 118 to Superior?

Very close — just two points below the Superior threshold of 120. That difference is smaller than the typical measurement error on any IQ test (which is usually around ±3 to ±5 points), so in practice a score of 118 on one testing session and 120 on another reflect essentially the same underlying cognitive ability. Many psychologists would describe your score as “borderline Superior” or “High Average bordering on Superior.”

This matters when you're reading what a score of 118 can and can't “do.” The distinction between 118 (High Average) and 120 (Superior) is essentially a label on a classification chart, not a real cognitive barrier. You can think of yourself as operating in the same cognitive range as someone who scored 120 or 122 — because statistically, you are.

How much to trust a single score of 118

Even the best clinical tests have measurement error. The WAIS-IV has a test-retest reliability of about 0.96 for the Full Scale IQ — excellent, but not perfect. The standard error of measurement is typically ±3 to ±5 points depending on the test and source.

If you scored 118, your “true” latent IQ most likely sits somewhere between 113 and 123. On a better day — after good sleep, with less test anxiety — you might score 121 or 122 (Superior range). On a worse day you might land at 115. The score isn't a single unchanging number you possess; it's an estimate with a confidence interval around it.

For an 118 specifically, this error band is interesting because it straddles the Superior boundary. Your cognitive ability is almost certainly in a zone that overlaps with the Superior range — you just happened to land on the High Average side of a classification line this time.

IQ 118 and education

An IQ of 118 is close to the average reported for adults holding professional degrees — MDs, JDs, DDSs — which cluster around 114 in WAIS-IV normative data analyses by Kaufman and colleagues (2016). It's also at or just above the mean for PhD holders (around 115). For comparison across educational attainment:

• High school graduates: mean IQ around 99
• Bachelor's degree holders: mean IQ around 110
• Master's degree holders: mean IQ around 112
• Professional degrees (MD, JD): mean IQ around 114
• Doctoral degrees (PhD): mean IQ around 115
• IQ 118: above the average for every category of educational attainment

What that tells you is that at 118, you have the cognitive raw material for any level of formal education. Whether you've pursued it or not is a separate question driven by motivation, funding, career goals, and life circumstances. A 118 with no degree is just as real a 118 as one with a PhD — the correlation between IQ and education reflects selection (more cognitively able people tend to pursue more education) far more than causation.

Two specific implications worth noting. First, graduate school is well within reach at 118 — you'd be comfortably above the mean for most graduate programmes and well-equipped for the reading, analysis, and problem-solving they require. Second, professional training programmes (law, medicine, dentistry) are accessible to you cognitively; the gatekeepers tend to be admissions processes and application volume rather than raw ability at this level.

What careers match an IQ of 118?

An IQ of 118 opens up virtually every professional career, including many that require strong analytical reasoning. You're at or above the group mean for:

• Most medical professions including general practitioners and specialists
• Civil, mechanical, and industrial engineers
• Solicitors and barristers at most levels of practice
• Architects and urban planners
• Financial analysts and portfolio managers
• Software developers outside the most algorithmically demanding roles
• University lecturers and academic researchers in most fields
• Senior management and executive roles
• Journalists, editors, and senior writers

The only group means that sit meaningfully higher than 118 are academic research scientists in hard sciences (mean around 125) and top-tier quantitative fields like theoretical physics or mathematics research (125+). Even there, “mean around 125” hides enormous variation — plenty of excellent researchers have IQs in your range, and the best predictor of research success at this level tends to be obsessive focus on a specific domain, not another 7 points of general cognitive ability.

At 118, the realistic cognitive bottleneck has already moved past raw IQ and onto what you do with it. Work ethic, domain expertise, emotional intelligence, persistence, and network matter far more for where you end up than the difference between 118 and 125.

Can you join Mensa with an IQ of 118?

Not quite. Mensa requires a score at the 98th percentile, which on the Wechsler scale corresponds to approximately IQ 132. An IQ of 118 is at the 88th percentile — so you're 14 points short of the threshold. That's closer than most people get; the bulk of the population would need 30+ points.

If Mensa specifically interests you, it's worth knowing that different tests accepted by Mensa have slightly different scoring conventions. Tests using a standard deviation of 16 (rather than the Wechsler's 15) would require around 131 rather than 132. Mensa also accepts prior scores from over 200 recognised tests, so if you've taken multiple assessments and scored higher on one, that could be relevant.

That said, Mensa membership isn't a meaningful life goal for most people. The society is essentially a social club with a cognitive entry requirement, and membership correlates only weakly with outcomes that actually matter — income, career success, relationships, life satisfaction. At 118 you're already in the top 12% of the population with more than enough cognitive ability for any career path you'd realistically want to pursue.

What to keep in mind about an IQ of 118

A few things worth knowing so you can read your score accurately — not to talk it down, but because understanding these makes the number more meaningful, not less.

• You're closer to Superior than to average. At 118, you're only 2 points shy of Superior (120) but 18 points above average (100). The honest framing of your score is “upper-end High Average bordering on Superior,” not “slightly above average.”
• You have genuinely strong cognitive raw material. The research on IQ is clear that general cognitive ability correlates with educational attainment (around 0.5), job performance (around 0.3-0.5 depending on role complexity), and income (around 0.3-0.4). At 118 you have real advantages in all of these. The remaining variance in outcomes comes from conscientiousness, network, domain expertise, and luck — which is where you make or miss your opportunities.
• It's an estimate, not a fixed attribute. Your score will naturally vary a few points from test to test and day to day. Treat your 118 as “somewhere in upper High Average / borderline Superior territory” rather than a precise ranking against someone who scored 117 or 119.
• It captures one kind of intelligence. IQ measures the general factor behind reasoning and problem-solving — genuinely important and well-studied. But creativity, emotional intelligence, wisdom, and deep domain expertise all contribute to how people actually succeed, and your 118 tells you nothing about those — which could easily be higher still.

The bottom line on IQ 118

An IQ of 118 is genuinely good. You're in the top 12% of the population, at or above the average for every category of educational attainment including PhD holders, and just two points shy of the Superior classification. Every professional career is cognitively accessible to you — from medicine and engineering through to research and senior management. Mensa (at the 98th percentile) sits about 14 points above you, but crossing that threshold wouldn't change much about your real-world capabilities.

If you scored 118 on a reliable test, the practical read is: you have strong cognitive raw material, and you're better positioned than roughly 9 out of every 10 people you meet. The biggest gains from here come from what you build on top of that foundation — skills, experience, and reputation in a field you care about.

And if you haven't taken a reliable test yet, or you're curious whether your real score is closer to 115 or 121 (both are plausible given measurement error on a single session), that's where a proper assessment helps.

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