What Does a Wonderlic Score of 28 Mean?

A raw score of 28 puts you at the 88th percentile — in the top quartile of Wonderlic test-takers and competitive for skilled-professional positions.

Where 28 falls on the distribution

28 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 12% of the population reaches this point.

Roles where a 28 is competitive

Role fit: In range for technical roles: engineering, programming, finance, accounting.

Wonderlic's published occupational data lists the average score for accountants at exactly 28. A 28 is right at that role's central tendency.

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 28 to 31 after a week or two of focused practice, your percentile would shift from 88th to 94th — a 6-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.