CCAT benchmarks by role
The Criteria Cognitive Aptitude Test has an overall average raw score of 24 out of 50. Criteria Corp publishes role-specific target scores and many employers use their defaults.
Sales development reps and customer success roles typically target 22 and above. Operations and junior analyst roles target 25 and above. Technical product manager roles target 30 and above. Vista Equity Partners portfolio roles, which helped make the CCAT famous on hiring forums, commonly target 33 to 36 depending on seniority. The 90th percentile starts around 38, and anything above 42 is extremely rare.
Wonderlic benchmarks by role
The Wonderlic is 50 questions in 12 minutes and has been in continuous use since 1937. The published population average is 20 out of 50. Targets are grouped by role family.
Unskilled labor targets 10 to 12. Clerical and entry-level office roles target 17 to 21. Skilled trades target 21 to 24. Middle management and most technical roles target 23 to 28. Executive and engineering roles target 27 to 32. The NFL Combine, which made the Wonderlic famous for a generation, averages 24 for quarterbacks historically. Only one player has ever recorded a confirmed 50.
PI Cognitive benchmarks by role
The Predictive Index Cognitive Assessment (PICA) is 50 questions in 12 minutes. Raw scores range from 100 to 450, and the overall average is roughly 250. What makes the PI different is that scores are always interpreted against a Job Target Score set by the employer for that specific role.
Typical entry-level roles target 200 to 225. Experienced individual contributors and team leads target 225 to 275. Senior roles and analytically demanding positions target 275 to 325. Roles that demand complex reasoning under pressure, such as investment roles or senior product management, often target 300 and above. A score 5 to 10 points below target is usually treated as a hard cutoff.
SHL percentile framing
SHL reports results as percentiles rather than raw scores for most of its assessments, including Verify G+ and the Verify Interactive series. This makes benchmarking cleaner because the norm group is built into the number.
Graduate consulting roles typically require the 70th percentile or higher. Professional services firms commonly use the 75th percentile. MBB consulting and bulge bracket investment banking draw the line around the 85th percentile. Anything above the 95th percentile is exceptional and is how candidates from non-target schools break into top-tier interview lists.
Watson-Glaser for legal roles
The Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal is the most common assessment for legal training contracts and graduate schemes at Magic Circle and Silver Circle firms. It is 40 questions across five sections in 30 minutes.
The practical cutoff at Magic Circle firms is around 75 percent raw accuracy, which maps to roughly the 80th percentile. Silver Circle firms tend to use similar bars. US law firms tend to use the Watson-Glaser less frequently and the benchmarks vary more. When in doubt, aim for 32 correct out of 40 in practice.
Why percentile beats raw score
Raw score without a norm group is meaningless. A 28 on the CCAT sounds identical to a 28 on the Wonderlic, but they map to wildly different percentiles because the norm groups are different.
Always ask what percentile your target raw score represents within the specific norm group the employer uses. Some vendors publish norm-group options and some employers pick custom subgroups such as "university graduate applicants" or "early-career technical candidates." The percentile is the only number that survives comparison across tests.
How close to the cutoff is risky
Test-day performance is not your practice average. It is your practice average minus a variance penalty. Nerves, unfamiliar software, and the novelty of the actual test environment usually shave two to four percentile points off your typical practice score.
If your target role requires the 70th percentile, practice until you consistently hit the 85th. That 15-point buffer is the safety margin that absorbs test-day variance. If your practice scores are within 10 percent of the cutoff, you are rolling the dice.
What to do if your practice score is well below target
Focus on format familiarity first, not content. Most of the gap between practice and target for candidates below role targets comes from unfamiliarity with the test structure and unrealistic pacing assumptions. Fix those first.
If the gap is more than 20 percentile points, accept that closing it in a week is unrealistic. Take the test anyway if the application deadline requires it, but plan for a longer prep cycle before your next attempt. For many tests, retakes are restricted to six or twelve months, so the first attempt matters.