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What score is good for which job?

There is no single pass mark on any of these tests. Each employer sets its own bar. But the publishers do print numbers, and they tell you a lot about where the bar usually sits.

Updated October 13, 2026 · by TimedPrep

First: who decides what "good" means

The employer does. All three publishers build their tools so that each company chooses the range or target for each role. A published range is the publisher's suggestion for a typical employer. A consulting firm or a remote-first tech company with thousands of applicants may ask for much more; a local employer may be relaxed. Use the numbers below as the floor you want to clear with room to spare.

CCAT: Criteria's suggested ranges by job

The CCAT score is the number of correct answers out of 50. The norm group's median is 24 with a standard deviation of 7 (Criteria Information Brief), so roughly two thirds of people score between 17 and 31.

Every CCAT score report includes a page that compares the candidate with suggested ranges for about 40 job families (25 of them are in the table below). Criteria says the ranges are built from more than 700,000 results. The table below is taken from Criteria's own sample score report, dated January 1, 2026, read in October 2026. Every range in it runs up to 50, so what matters is the lower number.

How to read it:

• The suggested minimums sit at or below the average score of 24. They mark where Criteria's data says successful people in that role start, not where the competition ends.
• A score of 24 is inside every range in the table. A score of 20 is inside the ranges from customer service up to management and software development.
• Employers can replace these with their own ranges inside Criteria's platform (Information Brief). If your recruiter told you a number, that number wins.

A practical target: aim for about five points above the suggested minimum for your role. With an average of 24 and a spread of 7, a score of 31 is about one standard deviation above average, which puts you ahead of roughly five candidates in six.

Wonderlic: historical averages, not requirements

Start with what the publisher says today. In its candidate FAQ, Wonderlic states that there is no universal good or average score, that Wonderlic Select does not produce a single cognitive score, and that the cognitive, motivation and personality results are combined and judged against the specific job. Candidates are not given a numeric cognitive score at all.

The numbers people quote come from the older 50-point Wonderlic Personnel Test, built so that the average adult scored about 20. Old test manuals listed average scores of people working in different occupations. Third-party sites still repost them; this version is from Test-Guide:

Three warnings. These are decades old. Different reposts disagree by one to three points. And they describe the average person in a job, which is not a hiring cut-off: half the people in each occupation scored below their group's average. Wonderlic does not publish current cut-offs.

What the table is good for: a rough sense of scale on a 50-point practice test. If you are applying for an analytical role and your timed practice score is 18, you have work to do; if it is 30, the cognitive part is unlikely to be what holds you back.

PI Cognitive Assessment: a target per role

The PI score is a scaled score from 100 to 450, reported in 10-point steps, with a global average of 250 (Administrator's Guide). The publisher's blog says 250 corresponds to about 20 correct answers, and the guide's example puts 340 at the 86th percentile.

The Predictive Index does not publish a list of targets by job. Instead, each employer sets a target score for the role inside the software, starting from a job family and adjusting it with a questionnaire about the job. If no job family fits, the starting target is the average, 250. A candidate at or above the target gets the top match rating; the guide says there is no penalty for scoring above it. Below the target, the rating falls on a sliding scale.

The publisher even tells employers not to call a score "good" or "bad", only a match or not a match for the role. Prep vendors publish their own tables of typical targets by job; they are estimates, and we do not repeat them.

A practical target: 20 correct is average. Each additional correct answer moves you up, and since wrong answers do not count against you, every question you reach should have an answer.

How to find out where you stand

None of these publishers shows candidates their score in the normal course of hiring. The only way to know your level before the employer does is a timed practice test in the same format. On TimedPrep the first full test for each exam is free, with no sign-up. For the CCAT, the result page compares your score with the published ranges above and lists the job families whose range you already meet; for the Wonderlic and PI it shows your raw score and an estimate, labeled as an estimate.

A practice score is not a prediction of your result on the employer's test. Our questions are written by us in the same format, and the difficulty is set by a model to land near the published averages (it has not yet been measured on real test takers), but only the publisher's test produces the publisher's score.

Related guides

• The CCAT: 50 questions in 15 minutes, average score 24
• The PI Cognitive Assessment: 50 questions, 12 minutes, nine question types
• The Wonderlic test: 50 questions, 12 minutes, and what to do about it
• 50 questions in 12 minutes: a pacing plan that works
• What happens after you submit the test