Wolfgang Amadeus MozartComposer
Cox rated him 155 for ages 17 to 26, 2 points below 157. Cox's childhood rating for him was 150.
Can an IQ of 157 be measured?
Yes, but only just. An IQ of 157 is higher than about 99.99% of people, roughly 1 in 13,822, and it is three points below the highest score most clinical tests can give. For children, test makers had to build special extended norms to measure this high.
99.9927thpercentile
1 in 13,822score 157 or higher
Highly giftedlevel of giftedness
157IQ scoreTop 0.0072%
How far out on the bell curve is 157?
Plot 157 on the bell curve and it lands 3.8 standard deviations, or 57 points, to the right of the average. The area beyond it, coloured orange below, holds only 0.0072% of people, too thin to see without zooming in.
157 is three points below the score where most clinical tests stop counting.
What makes 157 different
A score of 157 is often the moment someone hits a test's ceiling on one or more parts. On the WISC-V, the children's Wechsler test, subtests stop at a scaled score of 19. A child who gets 19 on several subtests may be capable of much more, but the standard scoring can't show it.
That is a measurement problem, not a ceiling on the child. About 590,000 people worldwide would score 157 or higher. Telling them apart from each other needs more very hard questions than standard tests include, which is exactly why extended scoring was developed.
How many people have an IQ of 157?
To meet one person scoring 157 or above, you would need, on average, a crowd of 13,822. Here is that crowd, built up step by step.
A crowd of 13,822 people
13,822
Every dot stands for a person. Only the orange one, one in the whole crowd, would be expected to reach 157.
People scoring 157 or higher, by population
| Worldwide (8.2 billion people) | about 594,000 |
| India | about 106,000 |
| United States | about 24,700 |
| United Kingdom | about 5,030 |
| Canada | about 3,010 |
| Australia | about 2,000 |
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 157?
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 157, 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 157?
The main clinical tests can report up to 160, 3 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 0.16 of them would be expected at 157 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 157 means about 152 to 162. The top of that range is beyond the test's ceiling. 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 157 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.
157standard scale (SD 15), used by Wechsler tests and on this page
161older Stanford-Binet scale (SD 16)
191Cattell scale (SD 24), used by some older and online tests
Turn it around: if a test using the Cattell scale reports 157, the standard-scale equivalent is just 136. From an SD 16 test, 157 converts to about 153. Check the scale before comparing any high score. IQ standard deviations explained.
Historical figures rated at about 157
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.
Charles DickensNovelist
Cox rated him 155 for ages 17 to 26, 2 points below 157. Cox's childhood rating for him was 145.
George Frideric HandelComposer
Cox rated him 155 for ages 17 to 26, 2 points below 157. 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 157 IQ claims, checked
Search for a 157 IQ and the same famous names keep appearing. Here is what we found when we followed each figure back to where it started.
Elon Musk
No test result has ever been published. The figure circulates on websites without a source.
Sources for every claim are listed in our celebrity IQ list.
How tests reach beyond 160: extended norms
In 2019 Pearson published extended norms for the WISC-V at the request of the National Association for Gifted Children. They are "designed to be used to more clearly identify highly gifted children with composite scores far above 130", and they "raise the upper end of the score range for the subtests to a maximum value of 28 points and for composite scores to 210 points". They are only used when a child reaches the normal maximum of 19 on at least one subtest.
The Stanford-Binet 5 has a similar option, the Extended IQ, which can report full-scale scores above 160, up to 225. These extended scales are tools for spotting the most able children, not precise measurements: so few people score this high that every point beyond 160 rests on very little data.
Sources: Raiford, S. E. and others (2019), WISC-V Technical Report #6: Extended Norms, Pearson; Stanford-Binet 5 Interpretive Manual, PRO-ED.
What does an IQ of 157 mean?
An IQ of 157 means a test ranked your reasoning in the top 0.01% for your age. It is "highly gifted", three points under the "exceptionally gifted" band. If a child scores this high with several subtests at the maximum, asking the psychologist about extended norms is a sensible next step.
Where 157 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 157 is from other milestones
27 points above the usual Mensa level (130)a score of 157 is about 314 times rarer than 130
11 points above the Triple Nine and ISPE bar (146)a score of 157 is about 15 times rarer than 146
3 points below the ceiling of most professional tests (160)reaching 160 is about 2 times rarer than 157
3.8 standard deviations above averageaverage is 100 and one standard deviation is 15 points
IQ 157 compared with nearby scores
| IQ | Percentile | Rarity | Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| 153 | 99.979th | 1 in 4,874 | Highly gifted |
| 155 | 99.987th | 1 in 8,139 | Highly gifted |
| 157 | 99.9927th | 1 in 13,822 | Highly gifted |
| 159 | 99.9958th | 1 in 23,873 | Highly gifted |
| 161 | 99.9976th | 1 in 41,937 | Exceptionally gifted |
157 IQ: common questions
Is 157 a high IQ?
Yes. 157 is a very high IQ: about 1 person in 13,822 scores this high or higher, which puts it at the 99.9927th 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 157 on the Cattell scale?
About 191. 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 157 is only about 136 on the standard scale.
What percentile is an IQ of 157?
An IQ of 157 is at about the 99.9927th percentile. Only about 0.0072% of people score 157 or higher.
How rare is an IQ of 157?
About 1 person in 13,822 scores 157 or higher, on the standard bell curve. Across the world's population of about 8.2 billion, that would be roughly 594,000 people.
Is an IQ of 157 good?
Yes, by any measure. 157 is higher than about 99.99% 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.
What is the highest score on the WISC-V?
With standard scoring, composite scores stop at the top of the normal range. With the extended norms Pearson published in 2019, composite scores can reach 210, for children who hit the maximum on one or more subtests.
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 157 sit several separate abilities. Read about spatial reasoning, verbal reasoning, processing speed, fluid vs crystallized intelligence and abstract reasoning, or try the free pattern recognition test.
Curious which celebrity IQs near 157 hold up? Read the full stories of 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?
Our free test takes about 25 minutes and gives an estimated IQ with its percentile. Results go up to 145, so a score like 157 can only be confirmed by a psychologist.
Take the free IQ testPortraits are pencil-style sketches by Assessivo, based on: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart after Barbara Krafft (1819), public domain. Charles Dickens after a photograph by Jeremiah Gurney (1867), 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.