Leonardo da VinciArtist, engineer and inventor
Cox rated him 150 for ages 17 to 26, 1 point below 151. Cox's childhood rating for him was 135.
What does an IQ of 151 mean?
An IQ of 151 is higher than about 99.97% of people: roughly 1 in 2,968 scores at this level or above. It is close to the average of the core group in Terman's gifted study, and near the top of the range one pioneer of gifted education thought was ideal.
99.966thpercentile
1 in 2,968score 151 or higher
Highly giftedlevel of giftedness
151IQ scoreTop 0.034%
How far out on the bell curve is 151?
Plot 151 on the bell curve and it lands 3.4 standard deviations, or 51 points, to the right of the average. The area beyond it, coloured orange below, holds only 0.034% of people, too thin to see without zooming in.
Past 150, each extra point removes about a fifth of the people still to the right of it.
What makes 151 different
151 is a reminder that "higher is better" stops being a simple rule this far out. Researchers who worked with very high scorers noticed that children far above their classmates often found school harder socially, not easier. That observation produced one of the most quoted ideas in gifted education: an "optimum" range of intelligence.
At 151 you are close to the upper end of that range. About 2.8 million people worldwide would be expected to score this high or higher. In a secondary school of 1,500 pupils, you would expect fewer than one; across a city of a million, about 340.
How many people have an IQ of 151?
To meet one person scoring 151 or above, you would need, on average, a crowd of 2,968. Here is that crowd, built up step by step.
A crowd of 2,968 people
2,968
Every dot stands for a person. Only the orange one, one in the whole crowd, would be expected to reach 151.
People scoring 151 or higher, by population
| Worldwide (8.2 billion people) | about 2,770,000 |
| India | about 493,000 |
| United States | about 115,000 |
| United Kingdom | about 23,400 |
| Canada | about 14,000 |
| Australia | about 9,300 |
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 151?
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 151, you would meet 4 of the 6 bars; the next, Prometheus Society, needs about 160.
-
MensaTop 2% (98th percentile) on an approved, supervised test130met
-
IntertelTop 1% (99th percentile); lists a Wechsler full-scale IQ of 135135met
-
Triple Nine Society99.9th percentile; lists a WAIS full-scale IQ of 146146met
-
International Society for Philosophical Enquiry99.9th percentile; lists a WAIS-III or WAIS-IV full-scale IQ of 146146met
-
Prometheus Society1 in 30,000 (99.997th percentile), four standard deviations above average160not met
-
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 151?
The main clinical tests can report up to 160, 9 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 0.74 of them would be expected at 151 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 151 means about 146 to 156. 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 151 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.
151standard scale (SD 15), used by Wechsler tests and on this page
154older Stanford-Binet scale (SD 16)
182Cattell scale (SD 24), used by some older and online tests
Turn it around: if a test using the Cattell scale reports 151, the standard-scale equivalent is just 132. From an SD 16 test, 151 converts to about 148. Check the scale before comparing any high score. IQ standard deviations explained.
Historical figures rated at about 151
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, 1 point below 151. 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.
Celebrity 151 IQ claims, checked
Search for a 151 IQ and the same famous names keep appearing. Here is what we found when we followed each figure back to where it started.
MZ
152No evidence of a test
Mark Zuckerberg
No interview, test record or published estimate could be found.
Sources for every claim are listed in our celebrity IQ list.
Leta Hollingworth's "optimum intelligence"
Leta Hollingworth studied highly gifted children in New York in the 1920s and 1930s. In Children Above 180 IQ (1942) she described an "'optimum' intelligence, from the viewpoint of personal happiness and adjustment to society", and placed it "somewhere between 125 and 155 IQ". In her conclusion she narrowed it to between 130 and 150.
Her reasoning was that children in this range are clever enough to lead and to be admired, but not so far from their peers that they struggle to find friends or to put up with slow-moving lessons. Her scores came from the old Stanford-Binet, so they don't map exactly onto today's scale, but the idea still shapes how schools think about very able pupils.
Source: Hollingworth, L. S. (1942), Children Above 180 IQ Stanford-Binet, World Book Company.
What does an IQ of 151 mean?
A score of 151 means very rare reasoning ability, in the top 0.04%. It is "highly gifted" on the levels used in gifted education. For a child, it often means a big gap between what they can do and what their classmates are doing, which can matter as much as the score itself.
Where 151 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 151 is from other milestones
21 points above the usual Mensa level (130)a score of 151 is about 68 times rarer than 130
5 points above the Triple Nine and ISPE bar (146)a score of 151 is about 3.2 times rarer than 146
9 points below the ceiling of most professional tests (160)reaching 160 is about 11 times rarer than 151
3.4 standard deviations above averageaverage is 100 and one standard deviation is 15 points
IQ 151 compared with nearby scores
| IQ | Percentile | Rarity | Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| 155 | 99.987th | 1 in 8,139 | Highly gifted |
151 IQ: common questions
Is 151 a high IQ?
Yes. 151 is a very high IQ: about 1 person in 2,968 scores this high or higher, which puts it at the 99.966th 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.
Is 151 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. 151 is very rare, yet achievements, not test scores, are what usually earn the word genius.
Can an online IQ test show a score of 151?
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 151 from nearby scores. A supervised Wechsler or Stanford-Binet assessment is needed to confirm it.
What is an IQ of 151 on the Cattell scale?
About 182. 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 151 is only about 132 on the standard scale.
What percentile is an IQ of 151?
An IQ of 151 is at about the 99.966th percentile. Only about 0.034% of people score 151 or higher.
Is 151 IQ too high to fit in?
Not necessarily. Leta Hollingworth suggested that children between about 125 and 155 IQ adapt most easily, and 151 is inside that range. Adults at any level find their own people; the social strain she described mostly affected young children in ordinary classrooms.
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 151 sit several separate abilities. Read about abstract reasoning, spatial reasoning, verbal reasoning, processing speed and fluid vs crystallized intelligence, or try the free pattern recognition test.
Curious which celebrity IQs near 151 hold up? Read the full stories of Terence Tao's IQ, Einstein's IQ, Isaac Newton's IQ, Nikola Tesla's IQ, Stephen Hawking's IQ, Bill Gates' IQ, Elon Musk's IQ and Garry Kasparov'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 151 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.