What Is the Average IQ of a Medical Doctor? What Data Exist

The average IQ of a medical doctor has never been measured in a representative group, so no checkable figure exists. The "125" or "130" you see online comes without a named test, a sample or a scale. What has been measured is smaller: an intelligence test given to UK medical students, a US survey that ranks doctors among the most intelligent groups without a number, and MCAT scores, which rank applicants against each other and are not IQ.

Below we separate what was measured from what was guessed, show what each claimed average would imply, and set doctors beside the lawyers, pilots and software engineers we have covered. We give no doctor IQ of our own, because no source supports one.

What is the average IQ of a doctor?

Nobody knows, because no study we found tested a representative sample of working doctors on an IQ test. People type "average IQ medical doctor" into search and get 120 to 130 anyway, usually with no source behind it.

A claimed average is easy to test for plausibility. On the usual scale, with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation (SD) of 15, each average puts the typical doctor at a rank:

• IQ 115 is the 84th percentile: about 1 person in 6 scores higher
• IQ 120 is the 91st percentile: about 1 in 11 scores higher
• IQ 125 is the 95th percentile: about 1 in 21 scores higher
• IQ 130 is the 97.7th percentile: about 1 in 44 scores higher

Those ranks are our arithmetic from the normal curve, and the IQ percentile calculator returns the same figures. An average of 130 would put the typical doctor ahead of 97.7 of every 100 people. That is a strong claim, and it needs a sample.

An average also hides spread. In her 1997 review in Intelligence, Linda Gottfredson put the SD of IQ among people inside one job at about 7.5 to 8.7 points, about half the 15 of the general population. If doctors averaged 125, about two in three would fall between roughly 117 and 133 (our arithmetic), and some would sit well outside that.

Is the average IQ of a medical doctor measured or guessed?

Mostly guessed. Three sources come closest to a measurement, and none of them gives an average for doctors.

The first is a 20-year study in the British Medical Journal (2003). McManus and colleagues followed 511 doctors who entered Westminster Medical School as clinical students between 1975 and 1982. At entry they took the AH5, a group test of general intelligence. The summary we could read reports no average score. It reports that A-level exam grades predicted who stayed on the Medical Register, and it calls the AH5 "of little predictive validity for subsequent medical careers".

The second is a 2013 paper in BMC Medicine by McManus and colleagues. It pooled five cohorts of UK medical students and doctors, two of which used the AH5. The authors found its links with later results inconsistent, and they note that entrants covered a narrow range of ability, which shrinks any correlation.

The third is a 2026 analysis by Edwards and DeYoung in Intelligence & Cognitive Abilities. They used ten Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery tests from two US youth surveys and grouped jobs by census code. Health diagnosing occupations, which include doctors, were among the most intelligent groups, alongside scientists and lawyers and judges. The authors say the survey was too small to study single occupations. The text gives no separate IQ for doctors, and we did not find the circulating 123.7 for physicians in it.

What does an MCAT score say about a doctor's IQ?

Very little, and an MCAT score is not an IQ. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) ranks test takers only against other takers, a group already filtered by college and ambition. In the AAMC figures reported in our MCAT score to IQ guide, students who started medical school in 2025-26 averaged 512.1 (SD 6.5). All test takers in 2023 to 2025 averaged 500.6 (SD 11.2).

So the typical new student sits 1.03 SDs above the mean of all takers, and a 512 is the 84th percentile in the AAMC's 2026-27 table. That rank cannot be turned into an IQ, because MCAT takers are not the general population. We found no study that calibrated the modern MCAT against an IQ test.

The MCAT does predict medical school results. A 2007 meta-analysis in Academic Medicine by Donnon, Paolucci and Violato pooled 23 studies. The MCAT correlated r = 0.39 with preclinical grades and r = 0.60 with the first US licensing exam, USMLE Step 1. The authors describe the predictive validity as small to medium.

Do surgeons, GPs and psychiatrists differ in IQ?

We found no data that compare medical specialties on an IQ test, so we cannot say. The Westminster study followed doctors into hospital posts and general practice and found that the AH5 did not independently predict career outcome. That is not a comparison of specialties, and it should not be read as one.

The same gap holds for the average IQ of medical doctors in any specialty, including the average IQ of a surgeon, a general practitioner or a psychiatrist. We found no study that measured any of them. Do doctors have high IQ? As a group, probably above average, since the US survey ranks them high. How high is unmeasured.

How do doctors compare with lawyers, engineers and pilots?

No study we found puts them on one test, so any ranking is a guess. For lawyers, the best-known numbers come from a 1945 Army table that gives a mean of 127.6 on a test with an SD of 20, about 121 on the usual scale by our arithmetic. Our guide to the average IQ of lawyers shows what that table can and cannot say.

For air traffic controllers, a 1974 FAA report puts them in the upper 20 percent of the general population on a general mental-ability test, about IQ 113 by our arithmetic. We cover that in our guide to the average IQ of pilots. For software engineers we found no measured average at all, as our piece on the average IQ of software engineers explains.

Gottfredson's 1997 review reprints Wonderlic data on job applicants. Its top jobs, research analyst and advertising manager, had a median applicant near IQ 120. The paper gives no IQ figure for physicians. Our overview of IQ by occupation explains why charts of exact scores by job are weak evidence.

Does a higher IQ make a better doctor?

There is no good evidence either way. In the Westminster cohort, the AH5 added little to later medical careers, while A-level grades predicted who stayed on the Register and how fast doctors passed their membership exams. The pooled 2013 data found the AH5 links inconsistent. Both used groups already selected for high attainment, which makes correlations look smaller than they would across everyone.

None of this shows that intelligence does not matter in medicine. It shows that among people who had already cleared a high bar, a general-ability score added little to what exam grades told us. We found no study that links a doctor's IQ to patient outcomes.

How can you check a claim about doctors' IQ?

Ask three questions about any average doctor IQ you meet: which test, which people and which scale. A real figure names an IQ test, says who took it (all working doctors, or students at one school) and gives the mean and SD. Then convert it with the IQ percentile calculator, which turns any score into a rank. For how employers use such tests, see what a cognitive ability test at work predicts.

Take the IQ Metrics test for a measured result. If you are weighing medical school admissions tests, our guide to UCAT scores covers the UK exam.

Common questions