Michelangelo BuonarrotiSculptor, painter and architect
Cox rated him 160 for ages 17 to 26, 2 points above 158. Cox's childhood rating for him was 145.
Is 158 a high IQ?
Yes, extremely. An IQ of 158 is higher than about 99.99% of people, roughly 1 in 18,127. It is the score Catharine Cox's ratings of Michelangelo and Descartes come closest to, and two points short of the usual test ceiling.
99.9944thpercentile
1 in 18,127score 158 or higher
Highly giftedlevel of giftedness
158IQ scoreTop 0.0055%
158 on the IQ bell curve
At 58 points above the mean of 100 (3.87 standard deviations), 158 sits where the curve has almost flattened onto the axis. Only 0.0055% of people score here or higher; on the left chart that group is the barely visible orange edge.
Only about one person in eighteen thousand is further to the right of 158 on the bell curve.
Reading an IQ of 158
158 is near the edge of the measurable. A clinical test can report it, but with a margin of error of several points it could be a true 155 or a true 161, and above 160 standard tests have nothing more to say. People who score this high are often described in terms of what they did, not what they scored.
That is exactly how Catharine Cox worked in 1926. She rated Michelangelo and René Descartes at 160 for ages 17 to 26, from records of their early work. About 450,000 people alive today would be expected to score 158 or higher, yet very few will ever take a test that can show it.
How many people have an IQ of 158?
How big a group do you need before someone in it is likely to score 158? About 18,127 people. Watch the crowd grow to that size.
A crowd of 18,127 people
18,127
One dot per person, and on average only one of them, shown in orange, scores 158 or more.
People scoring 158 or higher, by population
| Worldwide (8.2 billion people) | about 453,000 |
| India | about 80,800 |
| United States | about 18,900 |
| United Kingdom | about 3,830 |
| Canada | about 2,300 |
| Australia | about 1,520 |
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 158?
Entry to a high-IQ society depends on a percentile, which each one turns into a score per accepted test. Measured under supervision, 158 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 158?
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 158 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 0.12 of them at 158 or higher, less than one person, 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 158 really means somewhere near 153 to 163. Some of that range lies past what the test can show. 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 158 between scales
The number attached to a result depends on the scale's standard deviation. Near 158, switching scales can add or remove dozens of points for exactly the same rank.
158standard scale (SD 15), used by Wechsler tests and on this page
162older Stanford-Binet scale (SD 16)
193Cattell scale (SD 24), used by some older and online tests
So a "158" isn't always a 158. On the Cattell scale it corresponds to about 136 on the standard scale; on an SD 16 scale, about 154. Why IQ scales differ.
Who has been rated near an IQ of 158?
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.
René DescartesPhilosopher and mathematician
Cox rated him 160 for ages 17 to 26, 2 points above 158. Cox's childhood rating for him was 150.
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.
Who is said to have a 158 IQ?
These names are often given an IQ at or close to 158. Not one of the figures is backed by a published test result.
Albert Einstein
He never took an IQ test, and he isn't in Cox's 1926 study of historical geniuses, which only covered people born between 1450 and 1850.
Stephen Hawking
Asked about his IQ by The New York Times Magazine in 2004, he said he had no idea, adding: "People who boast about their I.Q. are losers."
Bill Gates
He has never published an IQ score. The 160 is an estimate worked back from his 1590 SAT result, not a test score.
QT
160Reported, no test shown
Quentin Tarantino
Stated in two 1995 biographies, one of which calls it "estimated". No test is named.
DL
160Contradicted
Dolph Lundgren
Maxim reported in 2008 that "He does not have an I.Q. of 160", quoting him: "I'm not that smart."
Sources for every claim are listed in our celebrity IQ list.
Leta Hollingworth's children above 180
The psychologist Leta Hollingworth spent years looking for children who scored far beyond 158. "I have found only twelve children who test at or above 180 IQ (S-B)," she wrote in her final book, published after her death in 1942. She followed several of them closely, describing their early reading, their schooling and their struggles to fit in.
Her numbers come from the old Stanford-Binet, scored as ratio IQs, so a 180 then does not equal a 180 today. But her central finding still holds: children at the far end of the curve are so different from their classmates that ordinary schooling rarely fits them, which is why she argued for special classes and careful guidance.
Source: Hollingworth, L. S. (1942), Children Above 180 IQ Stanford-Binet, World Book Company.
What does an IQ of 158 mean?
A score of 158 means a level of reasoning found in about one person in eighteen thousand. It is at the very top of the "highly gifted" band. For a child, a score this high usually calls for individual educational planning rather than a standard gifted programme.
Where 158 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 158 is from other milestones
28 points above the usual Mensa level (130)a score of 158 is about 412 times rarer than 130
12 points above the Triple Nine and ISPE bar (146)a score of 158 is about 20 times rarer than 146
2 points below the ceiling of most professional tests (160)reaching 160 is about 2 times rarer than 158
3.87 standard deviations above averageaverage is 100 and one standard deviation is 15 points
IQ 158 compared with nearby scores
| IQ | Percentile | Rarity | Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| 162 | 99.9982nd | 1 in 55,938 | Exceptionally gifted |
Your questions about a 158 IQ
Is 158 a high IQ?
Yes. 158 is a very high IQ: about 1 person in 18,127 scores this high or higher, which puts it at the 99.9944th 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 an IQ of 158 good?
Yes, by any measure. 158 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.
Can you join Mensa with an IQ of 158?
Yes. Mensa accepts the top 2% on an approved, supervised test, which is about 130 on the standard scale. A supervised 158 would also meet the bar for Intertel, Triple Nine Society and International Society for Philosophical Enquiry. Online test results are not accepted.
What does 158 IQ mean?
It means a result 58 points, or 3.87 standard deviations, above the average for your age. On the levels used by gifted education researchers, 158 is highly gifted (145–159).
Is 158 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. 158 is very rare, yet achievements, not test scores, are what usually earn the word genius.
How many people have an IQ of 158 or higher?
About 1 in 18,127 on the standard scale. Across the world's 8.2 billion people that is roughly 450,000; in the United States about 19,000, and in the United Kingdom about 3,800.
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 158 by combining several kinds of task. Learn more about verbal reasoning, processing speed, fluid vs crystallized intelligence, abstract reasoning and spatial reasoning, or try the free pattern recognition test.
Many famous IQ figures are guesses. See what is really known about Garry Kasparov's IQ, Terence Tao's IQ, Einstein's IQ, Isaac Newton's IQ, Nikola Tesla's IQ, Stephen Hawking's IQ, Bill Gates' IQ and Elon Musk's 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 158 needs a supervised professional test.
Take the free IQ testPortraits are pencil-style sketches by Assessivo, based on: Michelangelo after a portrait attributed to Daniele da Volterra (about 1545), public domain. René Descartes after Frans Hals (1649), public domain. Albert Einstein from a 1921 photograph by Ferdinand Schmutzer, public domain. Stephen Hawking sketch based on a photo by Jim Campbell/Aero-News Network, CC BY 3.0. Bill Gates from a 2018 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services photograph, public domain.