Benjamin FranklinUS statesman and scientist
Cox rated him 145 for ages 17 to 26, 1 point below 146. Cox's childhood rating for him was 145.
IQ 146: the 99.9th percentile line
An IQ of 146 is higher than about 99.89% of people: roughly 1 person in 924 scores this high or above. It is also the Wechsler score that the Triple Nine Society and ISPE list for their 99.9th percentile entry bar.
99.89thpercentile
1 in 924score 146 or higher
Highly giftedlevel of giftedness
146IQ scoreTop 0.11%
146 on the IQ bell curve
At 46 points above the mean of 100 (3.07 standard deviations), 146 sits where the curve has almost flattened onto the axis. Only 0.11% of people score here or higher; on the left chart that group is the barely visible orange edge.
Just one point higher than 145, the three-standard-deviation mark, 146 is where "top tenth of one percent" begins in the rule books of two high-IQ societies.
Reading an IQ of 146
146 is a score people meet on paper more often than in test rooms. Societies that admit the top 0.1% need a number to print next to each accepted test, and for the adult Wechsler scale that number is 146. Strictly, the 99.9th percentile falls a little above 146 on a perfect bell curve, which is why 146 itself works out at the 99.89th. The societies simply round to the nearest whole score.
The jump from 145 to 146 is tiny in ability, but it changes what a result opens up. At 145 you clear Mensa and Intertel; at 146, with a supervised Wechsler or Stanford-Binet result, you also clear the Triple Nine Society and the International Society for Philosophical Enquiry. In everyday life no one could tell the two scores apart.
How many people have an IQ of 146?
How big a group do you need before someone in it is likely to score 146? About 924 people. Watch the crowd grow to that size.
A crowd of 924 people
924
One dot per person, and on average only one of them, shown in orange, scores 146 or more.
People scoring 146 or higher, by population
| Worldwide (8.2 billion people) | about 8,890,000 |
| India | about 1,580,000 |
| United States | about 370,000 |
| United Kingdom | about 75,200 |
| Canada | about 45,100 |
| Australia | about 29,900 |
Population: World Bank, total population, 2025. Counts assume the same bell curve in every country and are rounded. Real tests can't sort people this finely, as the next sections explain.
Which high-IQ societies accept an IQ of 146?
Entry to a high-IQ society depends on a percentile, which each one turns into a score per accepted test. Measured under supervision, 146 meets 4 of the 6 bars; the next, Prometheus Society, needs about 160.
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MensaTop 2% (98th percentile) on an approved, supervised test130met
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IntertelTop 1% (99th percentile); lists a Wechsler full-scale IQ of 135135met
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Triple Nine Society99.9th percentile; lists a WAIS full-scale IQ of 146146met
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International Society for Philosophical Enquiry99.9th percentile; lists a WAIS-III or WAIS-IV full-scale IQ of 146146met
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Prometheus Society1 in 30,000 (99.997th percentile), four standard deviations above average160not met
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Mega SocietyOne in a million, beyond the range of standard tests171not met
Scores for Mensa, Intertel, Triple Nine and ISPE are the Wechsler figures those societies list or that match their percentile. Prometheus and Mega give only a rarity; the scores shown are the matching points on the standard scale. Prometheus says no test currently being given is approved for its entry. Online test results are not accepted by any of them.
Can an IQ test measure 146?
Each bar is the highest full-scale IQ a test can report. The adult Wechsler test and the Stanford-Binet both stop at 160, so 146 is still inside their range.
Why so uncertain? Because a test compares you with its norm sample, and the WAIS-IV sample had 2,200 adults. The bell curve predicts about 2.4 of them at 146 or higher, so the scoring at this level comes from the curve's shape rather than from real high scorers.
Add the usual margin of error, about five points either way, and a result of 146 really means somewhere near 141 to 151. No online test, ours included, can pin down a score this high. What online tests can and can't tell you.
Sources: WAIS-IV range and norm sample from Canivez (2010), Mental Measurements Yearbook review; Stanford-Binet 5 and its Extended IQ from PRO-ED; WISC-V extended norms from Pearson Technical Report #6 (2019). Striped bars are extended scales, used only when a person hits the normal ceiling.
Converting an IQ of 146 between scales
The number attached to a result depends on the scale's standard deviation. Near 146, switching scales can add or remove dozens of points for exactly the same rank.
146standard scale (SD 15), used by Wechsler tests and on this page
149older Stanford-Binet scale (SD 16)
174Cattell scale (SD 24), used by some older and online tests
So a "146" isn't always a 146. On the Cattell scale it corresponds to about 129 on the standard scale, which wouldn't reach Mensa's 130; on an SD 16 scale, about 143. Why IQ scales differ.
Who has been rated near an IQ of 146?
Catharine Cox's 1926 study is the source of nearly every historical "IQ". She estimated each person's score from records of their early life, once for childhood and once for ages 17 to 26. None of them sat a test.
Martin LutherLeader of the Reformation
Cox rated him 145 for ages 17 to 26, 1 point below 146. Cox's childhood rating for him was 115.
Immanuel KantPhilosopher
Cox rated him 145 for ages 17 to 26, 1 point below 146. Cox's childhood rating for him was 135.
Source: Cox, C. M. (1926), Genetic Studies of Genius, Vol. II: The Early Mental Traits of Three Hundred Geniuses, Stanford University Press. Cox stressed that thin records pull estimates down. Read more in where the historical genius IQ estimates came from.
Why the 99.9th percentile is printed as 146
The Triple Nine Society describes itself as a society "for people scoring at or above the 99.9th percentile on selected intelligence tests". Its accepted-test table then translates that percentile into a score for each test: 146 for the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale full-scale IQ, and 146 for the Stanford-Binet 5. ISPE, also known as The Thousand, uses the same 146 for WAIS-III and WAIS-IV results.
The small print matters. Triple Nine accepts WAIS-III results only for tests taken up to 15 February 2015, after the WAIS-IV replaced it, because an older test with older norms can overstate today's scores. A score of 146 is also only as solid as the test behind it: with measurement error of a few points, a true 99.9th-percentile adult could easily score 143 or 149 on the day.
Sources: Triple Nine Society, accepted test scores; ISPE, test scores.
What does an IQ of 146 mean?
A score of 146 means you answered a professional test's reasoning, verbal and working-memory problems at a level matched by about one adult in a thousand. It sits in the "highly gifted" band used in gifted education, and it says nothing on its own about motivation, creativity or knowledge, which matter just as much for what people go on to do.
Where 146 falls among the levels of giftedness
115–129Mildly gifted
130–144Moderately gifted
145–159Highly gifted
160–179Exceptionally gifted
180+Profoundly gifted
Levels and ranges from Gross, M. U. M. (2000), "Exceptionally and Profoundly Gifted Students: An Underserved Population", Understanding Our Gifted. They are a guide for education, not a ranking of people.
How far 146 is from other milestones
16 points above the usual Mensa level (130)a score of 146 is about 21 times rarer than 130
Exactly at the Triple Nine and ISPE barthe score both societies list for the 99.9th percentile
14 points below the ceiling of most professional tests (160)reaching 160 is about 34 times rarer than 146
3.07 standard deviations above averageaverage is 100 and one standard deviation is 15 points
IQ 146 compared with nearby scores
| IQ | Percentile | Rarity | Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| 142 | 99.74th | 1 in 391 | Moderately gifted |
| 144 | 99.83rd | 1 in 596 | Moderately gifted |
| 146 | 99.89th | 1 in 924 | Highly gifted |
| 148 | 99.931st | 1 in 1,455 | Highly gifted |
| 150 | 99.957th | 1 in 2,331 | Highly gifted |
Your questions about a 146 IQ
Is 146 a high IQ?
Yes. 146 is a very high IQ: about 1 person in 924 scores this high or higher, which puts it at the 99.89th percentile. It is above the 130 that most definitions use for a high IQ, and at or above the 146 used by the Triple Nine Society for its 99.9th percentile entry.
Can an online IQ test show a score of 146?
Some can show the number, but very few can measure it. Our own test reports up to 145, because a short online test doesn't have enough very hard questions, or enough high scorers in its data, to separate 146 from nearby scores. A supervised Wechsler or Stanford-Binet assessment is needed to confirm it.
What is an IQ of 146 on the Cattell scale?
About 174. The Cattell scale uses a standard deviation of 24 instead of 15, so the same result gives a bigger number. Going the other way, a Cattell score of 146 is only about 129 on the standard scale.
What percentile is an IQ of 146?
An IQ of 146 is at about the 99.89th percentile. Only about 0.11% of people score 146 or higher.
How rare is an IQ of 146?
About 1 person in 924 scores 146 or higher, on the standard bell curve. Across the world's population of about 8.2 billion, that would be roughly 8,890,000 people.
What societies can you join with an IQ of 146?
With a supervised result of 146 on an accepted test, you meet the published bars for Mensa (top 2%), Intertel (top 1%), the Triple Nine Society and ISPE (both 99.9th percentile, listed as 146 on the Wechsler adult test). You would not meet the Prometheus Society, which asks for 1 in 30,000.
Related: what counts as a good IQ score, the highest IQ in the world, famous people's IQs and the full IQ scale and range chart.
An IQ test arrives at a score like 146 by combining several kinds of task. Learn more about abstract reasoning, spatial reasoning, verbal reasoning, processing speed and fluid vs crystallized intelligence, or try the free pattern recognition test.
Many famous IQ figures are guesses. See what is really known about Nikola Tesla's IQ, Stephen Hawking's IQ, Bill Gates' IQ, Elon Musk's IQ, Garry Kasparov's IQ, Terence Tao's IQ, Einstein's IQ and Isaac Newton's IQ.
Curious where you'd land?
Try the free Assessivo IQ test: 36 questions, about 25 minutes, and an estimated score up to 145. Confirming a result as high as 146 needs a supervised professional test.
Take the free IQ testPortraits are pencil-style sketches by Assessivo, based on: Benjamin Franklin after Joseph-Siffred Duplessis (about 1785), public domain. Martin Luther after Lucas Cranach the Elder (1528), public domain. Immanuel Kant after Johann Gottlieb Becker (1768), public domain.