Charles DickensNovelist
Cox rated him 155 for ages 17 to 26, 1 point below 156. Cox's childhood rating for him was 145.
IQ 156: one in ten thousand
An IQ of 156 is higher than about 99.99% of people, roughly 1 in 10,584. It is the first whole score past the 1-in-10,000 mark, the level used by the best-known long-term study of profoundly able young people.
99.9905thpercentile
1 in 10,584score 156 or higher
Highly giftedlevel of giftedness
156IQ scoreTop 0.0094%
Where 156 sits on the bell curve
An IQ of 156 is 56 points above the average of 100, or 3.73 standard deviations. That is so far into the right-hand tail of the bell curve that the people scoring this high barely show up: about 0.0094% of the population, the orange sliver below.
On a perfect bell curve, the top 0.01% begins at about 155.8, so 156 is the first whole score inside it.
A closer look at an IQ of 156
"Top 0.01%" sounds abstract until you count it. In a country of 70 million people, it is about 6,600 people; across the world, about 780,000. That is the group the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth, at Johns Hopkins and later Vanderbilt, set out to follow from age 13.
Gifted education researchers also use 1 in 10,000 as a landmark. Miraca Gross gives the "highly gifted" band (145 to 159) a rarity of 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 10,000, with "exceptionally gifted" beginning at 160. On the standard bell curve, 156 is where that rarer end begins.
How many people have an IQ of 156?
On the bell curve, about 1 person in 10,584 scores 156 or higher. The animation builds a crowd until you would expect to find one.
A crowd of 10,584 people
10,584
Each dot is one person. In a crowd this size, on average, just one would score 156 or above: the orange dot.
People scoring 156 or higher, by population
| Worldwide (8.2 billion people) | about 776,000 |
| India | about 138,000 |
| United States | about 32,300 |
| United Kingdom | about 6,570 |
| Canada | about 3,940 |
| Australia | about 2,610 |
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 156?
High-IQ societies set entry as a percentile, then print the matching score for each test they accept. A supervised 156 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 156?
Most professional tests stop at a full-scale score of 160, so 156 is 4 points below where they stop. The bars show the highest full-scale score each test can report.
Even inside that range, the very top is thinly measured. Tests are scored against a norm sample: for the adult Wechsler test, the WAIS-IV, that sample was 2,200 people aged 16 to 90. On the bell curve, you would expect about 0.21 of those people to score 156 or higher, fewer than one. Scores this high are projected from the shape of the curve rather than compared with many real people.
Every score also carries measurement error. A professional report gives a range, typically about five points either way, so 156 is best read as roughly 151 to 161. Part of that range is above what the test can report. Online tests are rougher still; ours reports up to 145. How accurate are online IQ tests?
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.
156 IQ on other scales
The same performance gives different numbers on scales with a different standard deviation, and the gap is widest at the top.
156standard scale (SD 15), used by Wechsler tests and on this page
160older Stanford-Binet scale (SD 16)
190Cattell scale (SD 24), used by some older and online tests
It works the other way too. A 156 quoted from a Cattell-scale test equals only about 135 on the standard scale, and a 156 on an SD 16 test equals about 153. How IQ standard deviations work.
Famous people with an estimated IQ near 156
No historical genius took an IQ test. These figures come from Catharine Cox's 1926 study, which estimated IQs from records of each person's early life, with one rating for childhood and one for ages 17 to 26.
Wolfgang Amadeus MozartComposer
Cox rated him 155 for ages 17 to 26, 1 point below 156. Cox's childhood rating for him was 150.
George Frideric HandelComposer
Cox rated him 155 for ages 17 to 26, 1 point below 156. 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.
Famous people said to have an IQ of 156: real or myth?
Lists of celebrity IQs put many famous names at or near 156. We traced each figure to its earliest source, and none comes from a published IQ test.
Elon Musk
No test result has ever been published. The figure circulates on websites without a source.
SS
154Reported, no test shown
Sharon Stone
Printed in the introduction to a 1992 Playboy interview, not in her own words. Mensa said in 2002 she had never been a member.
LK
154No evidence of a test
Lisa Kudrow
The figure traces only to online discussion threads.
Sources for every claim are listed in our celebrity IQ list.
What happened to the top 1 in 10,000 children
The Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth identified children who, before age 13, scored at least 700 on the SAT maths section or 630 on the verbal section, which its researchers describe as the top 1 in 10,000. In a 2006 follow-up of 380 participants at an average age of about 34, 52% of the men and 54% of the women had earned a doctoral-level degree (a PhD, MD or law doctorate), about 50 times the base rate.
A 2013 study of 320 participants followed them to age 38. By then, 44% held doctorates, more than 7% held tenure at research-intensive universities, and 49 of them held a combined 133 patents. The authors' point was not that test scores decide lives, but that very high ability, spotted early, is a real advantage when it gets the right opportunities.
Sources: Lubinski, D. and others (2006), "Tracking exceptional human capital over two decades", Psychological Science, 17; Kell, H. J., Lubinski, D. and Benbow, C. P. (2013), "Who rises to the top?", Psychological Science, 24.
What does an IQ of 156 mean?
Scoring 156 means a reasoning level reached by about one person in ten thousand. It is "highly gifted", close to the boundary with "exceptionally gifted". The follow-up research below suggests that people at this level, when they get the chance, are unusually likely to reach the top of demanding careers.
Where 156 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 156 is from other milestones
26 points above the usual Mensa level (130)a score of 156 is about 241 times rarer than 130
10 points above the Triple Nine and ISPE bar (146)a score of 156 is about 11 times rarer than 146
4 points below the ceiling of most professional tests (160)reaching 160 is about 3 times rarer than 156
3.73 standard deviations above averageaverage is 100 and one standard deviation is 15 points
IQ 156 compared with nearby scores
| IQ | Percentile | Rarity | Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| 152 | 99.973rd | 1 in 3,795 | Highly gifted |
| 154 | 99.984th | 1 in 6,285 | Highly gifted |
| 156 | 99.9905th | 1 in 10,584 | Highly gifted |
| 158 | 99.9944th | 1 in 18,127 | Highly gifted |
| 160 | 99.9968th | 1 in 31,574 | Exceptionally gifted |
Questions about an IQ of 156
Is 156 a high IQ?
Yes. 156 is a very high IQ: about 1 person in 10,584 scores this high or higher, which puts it at the 99.9905th 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 156 IQ mean?
It means a result 56 points, or 3.73 standard deviations, above the average for your age. On the levels used by gifted education researchers, 156 is highly gifted (145–159).
Is 156 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. 156 is very rare, yet achievements, not test scores, are what usually earn the word genius.
Can an online IQ test show a score of 156?
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 156 from nearby scores. A supervised Wechsler or Stanford-Binet assessment is needed to confirm it.
What is an IQ of 156 on the Cattell scale?
About 190. 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 156 is only about 135 on the standard scale.
Is 156 IQ the top 0.01%?
Yes, just. On the standard scale, the top 0.01% (1 in 10,000) begins at about 155.8, so 156 is the first whole score inside it. About 1 person in 10,584 scores 156 or higher.
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.
A full IQ score of 156 combines several skills. Our guides explain each one: abstract reasoning, spatial reasoning, verbal reasoning, processing speed and fluid vs crystallized intelligence, or try the free pattern recognition test.
Famous names are often linked to scores like 156, with or without a source. We checked the evidence behind 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?
The free Assessivo IQ test gives an estimated IQ and percentile in about 25 minutes. It reports scores up to 145; for anything higher, a supervised professional assessment is the only reliable route.
Take the free IQ testPortraits are pencil-style sketches by Assessivo, based on: Charles Dickens after a photograph by Jeremiah Gurney (1867), public domain. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart after Barbara Krafft (1819), public domain. George Frideric Handel after a portrait attributed to Balthasar Denner (about 1727), public domain. Elon Musk sketch adapted from a photo by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 4.0.