Thomas JeffersonThird US president
Cox rated him 150 for ages 17 to 26, 1 point above 149. Cox's childhood rating for him was 145.
IQ 149: what it means and how rare it is
An IQ of 149 is higher than about 99.95% of people, roughly 1 in 1,838. It is the last score before 150, and it sits at the top of the wide band between the Mensa level and the very rare scores above 150.
99.945thpercentile
1 in 1,838score 149 or higher
Highly giftedlevel of giftedness
149IQ scoreTop 0.054%
149 on the IQ bell curve
At 49 points above the mean of 100 (3.27 standard deviations), 149 sits where the curve has almost flattened onto the axis. Only 0.054% of people score here or higher; on the left chart that group is the barely visible orange edge.
149 is the far edge of a stretch of the curve, from the low 130s up to here, that holds about one person in every 74.
Reading an IQ of 149
People often ask about scores "from 133 up to 149" because that is the range many test reports and online results land in for high scorers. On the standard bell curve, about 1.35% of people score between 133 and 149: around 1 in 74. Only about 0.043% score 150 or above, so the 133 to 149 band holds roughly thirty times as many people as everything above it.
Within that band, the same person can land almost anywhere depending on the test. A Wechsler score of 149, a Stanford-Binet (SD 16) score of about 152 and a Cattell score of about 178 all describe the same standing. That is why a high-IQ society always asks which test a number came from.
How many people have an IQ of 149?
How big a group do you need before someone in it is likely to score 149? About 1,838 people. Watch the crowd grow to that size.
A crowd of 1,838 people
1,838
One dot per person, and on average only one of them, shown in orange, scores 149 or more.
People scoring 149 or higher, by population
| Worldwide (8.2 billion people) | about 4,470,000 |
| India | about 797,000 |
| United States | about 186,000 |
| United Kingdom | about 37,800 |
| Canada | about 22,700 |
| Australia | about 15,000 |
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 149?
Entry to a high-IQ society depends on a percentile, which each one turns into a score per accepted test. Measured under supervision, 149 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 149?
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 149 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 1.2 of them at 149 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 149 really means somewhere near 144 to 154. 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 149 between scales
The number attached to a result depends on the scale's standard deviation. Near 149, switching scales can add or remove dozens of points for exactly the same rank.
149standard scale (SD 15), used by Wechsler tests and on this page
152older Stanford-Binet scale (SD 16)
178Cattell scale (SD 24), used by some older and online tests
So a "149" isn't always a 149. On the Cattell scale it corresponds to about 131 on the standard scale; on an SD 16 scale, about 146. Why IQ scales differ.
Who has been rated near an IQ of 149?
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.
Leonardo da VinciArtist, engineer and inventor
Cox rated him 150 for ages 17 to 26, 1 point above 149. 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.
Same person, different numbers: why 132 can equal 148
Mensa makes the point directly: "A result on one test of 132 [may be the same] as a score of 148 on another test." The first figure is on a scale with a standard deviation of 16, the second on the Cattell scale, which uses 24. Both are the 98th percentile, Mensa's entry level.
At 149 the spread is even wider: about 152 on an SD 16 test and about 178 on an SD 24 test. So when you compare a 149 with a friend's 165 from a different test, you may be comparing the same performance. The only fair comparison is by percentile, which is what societies, psychologists and this page use.
What does an IQ of 149 mean?
An IQ of 149 means you answered at a level reached by about one person in 1,800. It is "highly gifted" on the levels used in gifted education. The difference between 149 and 150 is far smaller than the error on any test, so think of it as the high 140s rather than a point short of a milestone.
Where 149 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 149 is from other milestones
19 points above the usual Mensa level (130)a score of 149 is about 42 times rarer than 130
3 points above the Triple Nine and ISPE bar (146)a score of 149 is about 2.0 times rarer than 146
11 points below the ceiling of most professional tests (160)reaching 160 is about 17 times rarer than 149
3.27 standard deviations above averageaverage is 100 and one standard deviation is 15 points
IQ 149 compared with nearby scores
| IQ | Percentile | Rarity | Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| 145 | 99.86th | 1 in 741 | Highly gifted |
| 147 | 99.913th | 1 in 1,157 | Highly gifted |
| 149 | 99.945th | 1 in 1,838 | Highly gifted |
| 151 | 99.966th | 1 in 2,968 | Highly gifted |
| 153 | 99.979th | 1 in 4,874 | Highly gifted |
Your questions about a 149 IQ
Is 149 a high IQ?
Yes. 149 is a very high IQ: about 1 person in 1,838 scores this high or higher, which puts it at the 99.945th 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 is an IQ of 149 on the Cattell scale?
About 178. 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 149 is only about 131 on the standard scale.
What percentile is an IQ of 149?
An IQ of 149 is at about the 99.945th percentile. Only about 0.054% of people score 149 or higher.
How rare is an IQ of 149?
About 1 person in 1,838 scores 149 or higher, on the standard bell curve. Across the world's population of about 8.2 billion, that would be roughly 4,470,000 people.
Is an IQ of 149 good?
Yes, by any measure. 149 is higher than about 99.95% of people. Remember that a score this high needs a supervised professional test to be confirmed, and that it describes reasoning on a test, not every kind of talent.
How many people score between 133 and 149?
About 1.35% of people, or roughly 1 in 74, score from 133 up to 149 on the standard scale (mean 100, SD 15). In a city of one million, that is about 13,500 people.
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 149 by combining several kinds of task. Learn more about processing speed, fluid vs crystallized intelligence, abstract reasoning, spatial reasoning and verbal reasoning, or try the free pattern recognition test.
Many famous IQ figures are guesses. See what is really known about Elon Musk's IQ, Garry Kasparov's IQ, Terence Tao's IQ, Einstein's IQ, Isaac Newton's IQ, Nikola Tesla's IQ, Stephen Hawking's IQ and Bill Gates' 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 149 needs a supervised professional test.
Take the free IQ testPortraits are pencil-style sketches by Assessivo, based on: Thomas Jefferson after Rembrandt Peale (1800), public domain. Leonardo da Vinci after his own red-chalk self-portrait (about 1517), public domain.