Leonardo da VinciArtist, engineer and inventor
Cox rated him 150 for ages 17 to 26, 2 points above 148. Cox's childhood rating for him was 135.
What does a 148 IQ mean?
A 148 IQ means a score higher than about 99.93% of people, roughly 1 in 1,455. It is close to the average IQ of the children in Lewis Terman's famous study of gifted children, which began in 1921.
99.931stpercentile
1 in 1,455score 148 or higher
Highly giftedlevel of giftedness
148IQ scoreTop 0.069%
How far out on the bell curve is 148?
Plot 148 on the bell curve and it lands 3.2 standard deviations, or 48 points, to the right of the average. The area beyond it, coloured orange below, holds only 0.069% of people, too thin to see without zooming in.
About 2.2% of people score between 130 and 148. Beyond 148, fewer than one person in a thousand remains.
What makes 148 different
148 is a useful score for testing a popular belief: that a very high IQ guarantees an extraordinary life. The best long-term evidence comes from Lewis Terman's study of more than 1,500 gifted Californian children, whose core group averaged around 148 to 151 on the Stanford-Binet. Most of them did well, but most did not become famous.
Two names show the limits of selection by score. William Shockley and Luis Alvarez were both tested as children and missed the cut-off for Terman's study. Both later won the Nobel Prize in Physics. A score of 148 marks rare reasoning ability; it is not a forecast of who will change a field.
How many people have an IQ of 148?
To meet one person scoring 148 or above, you would need, on average, a crowd of 1,455. Here is that crowd, built up step by step.
A crowd of 1,455 people
1,455
Every dot stands for a person. Only the orange one, one in the whole crowd, would be expected to reach 148.
People scoring 148 or higher, by population
| Worldwide (8.2 billion people) | about 5,650,000 |
| India | about 1,010,000 |
| United States | about 235,000 |
| United Kingdom | about 47,700 |
| Canada | about 28,600 |
| Australia | about 19,000 |
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 148?
Each society below admits a set top slice of the population and lists the score that matches it on the Wechsler adult scale. With a supervised result of 148, you would meet 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 148?
The main clinical tests can report up to 160, 12 points above this score. Below, the highest full-scale result each test is able to give.
The top of the range rests on very little data. Scores are worked out by comparison with a norm sample, and for the WAIS-IV that sample was 2,200 adults. Only about 1.5 of them would be expected at 148 or above, so a result this high is extrapolated from the curve, not matched against people who actually scored it.
There is measurement error too. Psychologists report a likely range rather than a single point, usually about five points each side, which for 148 means about 143 to 153. Online results are rougher, which is why ours stops at 145. Are online IQ tests accurate?
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.
Is 148 the same on every IQ scale?
IQ tests don't all use the same yardstick. A scale with a larger standard deviation turns the same rank into a bigger number, especially this far above average.
148standard scale (SD 15), used by Wechsler tests and on this page
151older Stanford-Binet scale (SD 16)
177Cattell scale (SD 24), used by some older and online tests
Turn it around: if a test using the Cattell scale reports 148, the standard-scale equivalent is just 130. From an SD 16 test, 148 converts to about 145. Check the scale before comparing any high score. IQ standard deviations explained.
Historical figures rated at about 148
The figures below are not test scores. In 1926 the psychologist Catharine Cox rated 301 eminent people from records of their youth, giving each a childhood estimate and a second one for ages 17 to 26.
Thomas JeffersonThird US president
Cox rated him 150 for ages 17 to 26, 2 points above 148. Cox's childhood rating for him was 145.
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.
What Terman's study of gifted children found
Terman's Genetic Studies of Genius began in 1921 and eventually followed 1,528 children: 856 boys and 672 girls. For children under 11, the provisional lower limit for inclusion was an IQ of 140 on the complete Stanford-Binet. For the main group of 643 children, the mean IQ was about 151 after Terman's own age correction and about 148 before it.
Terman expected his group to produce the leading figures of the next generation. Many became professionals, academics and writers, but the most famous counter-example comes from outside the sample: Shockley and Alvarez, who were tested and not selected, went on to Nobel prizes. The study is still cited as evidence that high scores predict success on average, and as a warning that they can't pick out individual greatness.
Sources: Terman, L. M. (1925), Genetic Studies of Genius, Vol. I; Leslie, M. (2000), "The Vexing Legacy of Lewis Terman", Stanford Magazine.
What does an IQ of 148 mean?
Scoring 148 means you reason at a level shared by about seven in every ten thousand people. It sits in the middle of the "highly gifted" band. For a child, a confirmed score like this is usually a sign that standard schoolwork will move too slowly, which is a question for educators rather than a label to carry.
Where 148 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 148 is from other milestones
18 points above the usual Mensa level (130)a score of 148 is about 33 times rarer than 130
2 points above the Triple Nine and ISPE bar (146)a score of 148 is about 1.6 times rarer than 146
12 points below the ceiling of most professional tests (160)reaching 160 is about 22 times rarer than 148
3.2 standard deviations above averageaverage is 100 and one standard deviation is 15 points
IQ 148 compared with nearby scores
| IQ | Percentile | Rarity | Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| 152 | 99.973rd | 1 in 3,795 | Highly gifted |
148 IQ: common questions
Is 148 a high IQ?
Yes. 148 is a very high IQ: about 1 person in 1,455 scores this high or higher, which puts it at the 99.931st 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.
What does 148 IQ mean?
It means a result 48 points, or 3.2 standard deviations, above the average for your age. On the levels used by gifted education researchers, 148 is highly gifted (145–159).
Is 148 a genius IQ?
There is no official genius score. Lewis Terman's early Stanford-Binet labels put scores over 140 in a "near genius or genius" group, but modern tests dropped the word. 148 is very rare, yet achievements, not test scores, are what usually earn the word genius.
Can an online IQ test show a score of 148?
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 148 from nearby scores. A supervised Wechsler or Stanford-Binet assessment is needed to confirm it.
What is an IQ of 148 on the Cattell scale?
About 177. 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 148 is only about 130 on the standard scale.
Is 148 IQ gifted?
Yes. On the levels used in gifted education, 145 to 159 is "highly gifted", and 148 is well inside that band. It is also above the 140 that Lewis Terman used as the provisional lower limit for younger children in his gifted study.
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.
Behind a single score of 148 sit several separate abilities. Read about verbal reasoning, processing speed, fluid vs crystallized intelligence, abstract reasoning and spatial reasoning, or try the free pattern recognition test.
Curious which celebrity IQs near 148 hold up? Read the full stories of Bill Gates' IQ, Elon Musk's IQ, Garry Kasparov's IQ, Terence Tao's IQ, Einstein's IQ, Isaac Newton's IQ, Nikola Tesla's IQ and Stephen Hawking's IQ.
Curious where you'd land?
Our free test takes about 25 minutes and gives an estimated IQ with its percentile. Results go up to 145, so a score like 148 can only be confirmed by a psychologist.
Take the free IQ testPortraits are pencil-style sketches by Assessivo, based on: Leonardo da Vinci after his own red-chalk self-portrait (about 1517), public domain. Thomas Jefferson after Rembrandt Peale (1800), public domain.