Michelangelo BuonarrotiSculptor, painter and architect
Cox rated him 160 for ages 17 to 26, 1 point below 161. Cox's childhood rating for him was 145.
IQ 161: one point past the ceiling
An IQ of 161 is higher than about 99.9976% of people: roughly 1 in 41,937 scores this high or above. It is also the first score most clinical IQ tests cannot give, because the WAIS-IV and the Stanford-Binet 5 stop at 160. Reaching it takes an extended scale.
99.9976thpercentile
1 in 41,937score 161 or higher
Exceptionally giftedlevel of giftedness
161IQ scoreTop 0.0024%
161 on the IQ bell curve
At 61 points above the mean of 100 (4.07 standard deviations), 161 sits where the curve has almost flattened onto the axis. Only 0.0024% of people score here or higher; on the left chart that group is the barely visible orange edge.
161 is the first point on the curve that standard clinical tests cannot reach: everything to the right is the territory of extended scales.
Reading an IQ of 161
At 160 the main clinical tests run out of numbers, not of people. A child or adult who answers every hard item still gets 160, because that is the highest full-scale score the scale was built to report. So a reported 161 tells you something about the test as well as the person: it must have come from an extended scale, an older ratio-style test or an unsupervised high-range test.
On the standard bell curve, about 196,000 people worldwide would score 161 or higher, including roughly 8,150 in the United States and 1,660 in the United Kingdom. That is still a crowd large enough to fill a small town, which is part of why extended scales were worth building.
How many people have an IQ of 161?
How big a group do you need before someone in it is likely to score 161? About 41,937 people. Watch the crowd grow to that size.
A crowd of 41,937 people
41,937
One dot per person, and on average only one of them, shown in orange, scores 161 or more.
People scoring 161 or higher, by population
| Worldwide (8.2 billion people) | about 196,000 |
| India | about 34,900 |
| United States | about 8,150 |
| United Kingdom | about 1,660 |
| Canada | about 993 |
| Australia | about 658 |
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 161?
Entry to a high-IQ society depends on a percentile, which each one turns into a score per accepted test. Measured under supervision, 161 meets 5 of the 6 bars; the next, Mega Society, needs about 171.
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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 average160met
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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 161?
The adult Wechsler test and the Stanford-Binet 5 both stop at 160, so neither can give a 161. To report a score this high, a psychologist needs an extended scale, such as the WISC-V extended norms (to 210) or the Stanford-Binet 5 Extended IQ (to 225), shown in the bars below.
Why so uncertain? Because a test compares you with its norm sample, and the WAIS-IV sample had 2,200 adults. The bell curve expects about 0.05 of them at 161 or higher. With nobody in the sample anywhere near this level, the number comes from the shape of the curve, not from comparison with real people.
There is measurement error too: a professional report would give a range of about 156 to 166 around a 161. With so few people ever measured at this level, the true uncertainty is larger still. Online results are far 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.
Converting an IQ of 161 between scales
The number attached to a result depends on the scale's standard deviation. Near 161, switching scales can add or remove dozens of points for exactly the same rank.
161standard scale (SD 15), used by Wechsler tests and on this page
165older Stanford-Binet scale (SD 16)
198Cattell scale (SD 24), used by some older and online tests
So a "161" isn't always a 161. On the Cattell scale it corresponds to about 138 on the standard scale; on an SD 16 scale, about 157. Why IQ scales differ.
Who has been rated near an IQ of 161?
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, 1 point below 161. 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 161 IQ?
These names are often given an IQ at or close to 161. 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.
What a test ceiling really means
Every subtest on the children's Wechsler scale converts raw answers into a scaled score from 1 to 19. A child who reaches 19 on several subtests has hit the ceiling, and the composite scores built from them stop at about 160. Pearson's 2019 extended norms were designed for exactly that case: "useful when a child's scaled score on one or more subtests is at the maximum value (i.e., 19 points)".
With the extended norms, subtest scores can rise to 28 and composite scores to 210. The authors also stress that the extension "is not useful for most children": among the 2,200 children in the WISC-V normative sample, only 16 obtained any composite score of 150 or higher.
Source: Raiford, Courville, Peters and others (2019), WISC-V Technical Report #6: Extended Norms, Pearson.
What does an IQ of 161 mean?
A confirmed 161 means a supervised extended-scale assessment placed you just beyond the point where standard tests stop. It sits in the "exceptionally gifted" band used in gifted education. On a standard test, the same performance would simply be recorded as 160, the ceiling.
Where 161 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 161 is from other milestones
15 points above the Triple Nine and ISPE bar (146)a score of 161 is about 45 times rarer than 146
1 point above the ceiling of most professional tests (160)a score of 161 is about 1.3 times rarer than 160
10 points below the Mega Society's one-in-a-million level (171)reaching 171 is about 22 times rarer than 161
19 points below the start of the profoundly gifted band (180)reaching 180 is about 495 times rarer than 161
4.07 standard deviations above averageaverage is 100 and one standard deviation is 15 points
IQ 161 compared with nearby scores
| IQ | Percentile | Rarity | Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| 163 | 99.9986th | 1 in 74,930 | Exceptionally gifted |
| 165 | 99.99926th | 1 in 136,176 | Exceptionally gifted |
Your questions about a 161 IQ
Is 161 a high IQ?
Yes. 161 is a very high IQ: about 1 person in 41,937 scores this high or higher, which puts it at the 99.9976th 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.
Can you join Mensa with an IQ of 161?
Yes. Mensa accepts the top 2% on an approved, supervised test, which is about 130 on the standard scale. A supervised 161 would also meet the bar for Intertel, Triple Nine Society, International Society for Philosophical Enquiry and Prometheus Society. Online test results are not accepted.
What does 161 IQ mean?
It means a result 61 points, or 4.07 standard deviations, above the average for your age. On the levels used by gifted education researchers, 161 is exceptionally gifted (160–179).
Is 161 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. 161 is very rare, yet achievements, not test scores, are what usually earn the word genius.
Can an online IQ test show a score of 161?
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 161 from nearby scores. A supervised Wechsler or Stanford-Binet assessment is needed to confirm it.
Can a standard IQ test give a score of 161?
No. The WAIS-IV and the Stanford-Binet 5 report full-scale IQs up to 160. A 161 can only come from an extended scale, such as the WISC-V extended norms or the Stanford-Binet 5 Extended IQ, or from a different kind of test, so it is worth checking which test produced it.
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 161 by combining several kinds of task. Learn more about abstract reasoning, spatial reasoning, verbal reasoning, processing speed and fluid vs crystallized intelligence, or try the free pattern recognition test.
Many famous IQ figures are guesses. See what is really known about Isaac Newton's IQ, Nikola Tesla's IQ, Stephen Hawking's IQ, Bill Gates' IQ, Elon Musk's IQ, Garry Kasparov's IQ, Terence Tao's IQ and Einstein'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 161 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.