René DescartesPhilosopher and mathematician
Cox rated him 160 for ages 17 to 26, 2 points below 162. Cox's childhood rating for him was 150.
Is 162 a high IQ?
Yes, exceptionally. An IQ of 162 is higher than about 99.9982% of people, roughly 1 in 55,938. Only extended scales can report it, and the best documented of them, the WISC-V extended norms, was built from a special sample of highly gifted children.
99.9982ndpercentile
1 in 55,938score 162 or higher
Exceptionally giftedlevel of giftedness
162IQ scoreTop 0.0018%
Where 162 sits on the bell curve
An IQ of 162 is 62 points above the average of 100, or 4.13 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 0.0018% of the population, the orange sliver below.
About 147,000 people worldwide would score 162 or higher on a perfect bell curve, fewer than live in a mid-sized town.
A closer look at an IQ of 162
162 sits two points past the clinical ceiling, which makes it a good test of how well extended scales work. Their job is to tell apart children who all hit the maximum on the standard test, so that a child who would have scored 162 is no longer lumped together with one who would have scored 175.
That matters most in school planning. A child whose ability is far beyond the usual top score may need more than enrichment, and a precise number can help a psychologist argue for faster progression. As always, the number is one piece of evidence, read alongside what the child actually does.
How many people have an IQ of 162?
On the bell curve, about 1 person in 55,938 scores 162 or higher. The animation builds a crowd until you would expect to find one.
A crowd of 55,938 people
55,938
Each dot is one person. In a crowd this size, on average, just one would score 162 or above: the orange dot.
People scoring 162 or higher, by population
| Worldwide (8.2 billion people) | about 147,000 |
| India | about 26,200 |
| United States | about 6,110 |
| United Kingdom | about 1,240 |
| Canada | about 745 |
| Australia | about 494 |
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 162?
High-IQ societies set entry as a percentile, then print the matching score for each test they accept. A supervised 162 would meet 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 162?
Not on a standard clinical test. The WAIS-IV and the Stanford-Binet 5 report full-scale scores up to 160, so 162 is 2 points beyond where they stop. Only extended scales built for gifted children reach this far: the WISC-V extended norms go to 210 and the Stanford-Binet 5 Extended IQ to 225.
The deeper problem is evidence. Tests are scored against a norm sample, and 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 0.04 of those people to score 162 or higher, a tiny fraction of one person. Extended scales get around this by using the patterns of children who hit the ceiling, but any score this high is an estimate projected from the curve.
Every score also carries measurement error, typically about five points either way, so 162 is best read as roughly 157 to 167, a range that lies entirely beyond what standard tests report. At these heights, extended-scale scores are also less certain than the margin suggests, because so few people have ever been measured there. Online tests can't reach this level at all; 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.
162 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.
162standard scale (SD 15), used by Wechsler tests and on this page
166older Stanford-Binet scale (SD 16)
199Cattell scale (SD 24), used by some older and online tests
It works the other way too. A 162 quoted from a Cattell-scale test equals only about 139 on the standard scale, and a 162 on an SD 16 test equals about 158. How IQ standard deviations work.
Famous people with an estimated IQ near 162
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.
Michelangelo BuonarrotiSculptor, painter and architect
Cox rated him 160 for ages 17 to 26, 2 points below 162. 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 162: real or myth?
Lists of celebrity IQs put many famous names at or near 162. We traced each figure to its earliest source, and none comes from a published IQ test.
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.
How the WISC-V extended norms were built
Pearson developed the extended norms in response to requests from the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC). Psychologists contributed a special sample of highly gifted children: 108 usable cases, aged 6 to 16 with an average age of 9.6, of whom 71% were boys.
Using the extended norms, average composite scores in this group rose by about 1 to 2 points, the maximum scores rose more, and about 43% of the children received a higher full-scale IQ than under the regular norms. The authors concluded that the extended norms "improved differentiation among the highly gifted children".
Source: Raiford, Courville, Peters and others (2019), WISC-V Technical Report #6: Extended Norms, Pearson.
What does an IQ of 162 mean?
An IQ of 162 means reasoning at a level shared by about two people in every hundred thousand of the same age, in the "exceptionally gifted" band. In practice, a confirmed score like this is almost always found in children assessed for gifted education, because adult tests can't report it.
Where 162 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 162 is from other milestones
16 points above the Triple Nine and ISPE bar (146)a score of 162 is about 61 times rarer than 146
2 points above the ceiling of most professional tests (160)a score of 162 is about 1.8 times rarer than 160
9 points below the Mega Society's one-in-a-million level (171)reaching 171 is about 16 times rarer than 162
18 points below the start of the profoundly gifted band (180)reaching 180 is about 371 times rarer than 162
4.13 standard deviations above averageaverage is 100 and one standard deviation is 15 points
IQ 162 compared with nearby scores
| IQ | Percentile | Rarity | Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| 164 | 99.999th | 1 in 100,799 | Exceptionally gifted |
| 166 | 99.99945th | 1 in 184,756 | Exceptionally gifted |
Questions about an IQ of 162
Is 162 a high IQ?
Yes. 162 is a very high IQ: about 1 person in 55,938 scores this high or higher, which puts it at the 99.9982nd 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 an online IQ test show a score of 162?
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 162 from nearby scores. A supervised Wechsler or Stanford-Binet assessment is needed to confirm it.
What is an IQ of 162 on the Cattell scale?
About 199. 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 162 is only about 139 on the standard scale.
What percentile is an IQ of 162?
An IQ of 162 is at about the 99.9982nd percentile. Only about 0.0018% of people score 162 or higher.
How rare is an IQ of 162?
About 1 person in 55,938 scores 162 or higher, on the standard bell curve. Across the world's population of about 8.2 billion, that would be roughly 147,000 people.
Which test can measure an IQ of 162?
An extended scale, such as the WISC-V extended norms for children (composites up to 210) or the Stanford-Binet 5 Extended IQ (up to 225). Standard adult tests such as the WAIS-IV stop at 160.
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 162 combines several skills. Our guides explain each one: spatial reasoning, verbal reasoning, processing speed, fluid vs crystallized intelligence and abstract reasoning, or try the free pattern recognition test.
Famous names are often linked to scores like 162, with or without a source. We checked the evidence behind Nikola Tesla's IQ, Stephen Hawking's IQ, Bill Gates' IQ, Elon Musk's IQ, Garry Kasparov's IQ, Terence Tao's IQ, Einstein's IQ and Isaac Newton'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: René Descartes after Frans Hals (1649), public domain. Michelangelo after a portrait attributed to Daniele da Volterra (about 1545), 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.