What Does a Wonderlic Score of 26 Mean?

A raw score of 26 puts you at the 76th percentile — in the top quartile of Wonderlic test-takers and competitive for skilled-professional positions.

Where 26 falls on the distribution

26 puts you above 75% of all Wonderlic test-takers and comfortably above the published average for most professional roles. This is the band where employer cut-scores for professional hiring typically sit. Only about 24% of the population reaches this point.

Roles where a 26 is competitive

Role fit: In range for professional roles: nursing, teaching, sales, junior corporate positions.

For context: Wonderlic's published occupational data lists the average score for registered nurses at 24. Your 26 is 2 points above that role's average.

This is roughly the band where Wonderlic itself defines "skilled professional" performance. Most professional and managerial roles will accept scores in this band; technical roles may aim higher.

What a few extra points buys you

If you went from 26 to 29 after a week or two of focused practice, your percentile would shift from 76th to 90th — a 14-point percentile gain from a 3-point raw gain. The Wonderlic's distribution is steep through the middle, so each raw point in the 20s and 30s does meaningful percentile work.

Source: percentiles on this page are interpolated from the anchors in the official Wonderlic Personnel Test sample report (©Wonderlic Inc. 2018), which prints "Score 31 / Percentile in Total Population 94 / IQ Equivalent 121". Remaining anchors follow the commonly cited Wonderlic population norms (mean ≈ 20–21, SD ≈ 7) on the 1992 normative sample of N=118,549. Occupational averages cited above are from Wonderlic's own published occupational data.