Thomas Babington MacaulayHistorian and politician
Cox rated him 165 for ages 17 to 26, 2 points below 167. Cox's childhood rating for him was 180.
What does a 167 IQ mean?
A 167 IQ means a score higher than about 99.9996% of people, roughly 1 in 251,738. It is also the lowest of the figures that have been reported for Marilyn vos Savant, whose childhood scores range from 167 to 230 depending on who did the arithmetic.
99.9996thpercentile
1 in 251,738score 167 or higher
Exceptionally giftedlevel of giftedness
167IQ scoreTop 0.0004%
167 on the IQ bell curve
At 67 points above the mean of 100 (4.47 standard deviations), 167 sits where the curve has almost flattened onto the axis. Only 0.0004% of people score here or higher; on the left chart that group is the barely visible orange edge.
At 167, the share of people further out is about four in ten million, a sliver too thin to see on a full-size chart.
Reading an IQ of 167
Vos Savant was listed by Guinness from 1985 to 1989 with an IQ of 228, from a Stanford-Binet test taken at age 10 and scored with the old "mental age divided by real age" formula. As our article on the highest IQ in the world explains, a school record gives a lower mental age from a later sitting, recalculations with different ages give 218, and 228 is often rounded up to 230.
The spread from 167 to 230 is a lesson about method, not about her. Ratio scores like 228 can't be placed on today's bell curve, and a single childhood test can be re-scored in more than one defensible way. A modern deviation score of 167, by contrast, means one thing: a rank of about one in a quarter of a million.
How many people have an IQ of 167?
How big a group do you need before someone in it is likely to score 167? About 251,738 people. Watch the crowd grow to that size.
A crowd of 251,738 people
251,738
One dot per person, and on average only one of them, shown in orange, scores 167 or more.
People scoring 167 or higher, by population
| Worldwide (8.2 billion people) | about 32,600 |
| India | about 5,820 |
| United States | about 1,360 |
| United Kingdom | about 276 |
| Canada | about 165 |
| Australia | about 110 |
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 167?
Entry to a high-IQ society depends on a percentile, which each one turns into a score per accepted test. Measured under supervision, 167 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 167?
The adult Wechsler test and the Stanford-Binet 5 both stop at 160, so neither can give a 167. 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 0.0087 of them at 167 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 162 to 172 around a 167. 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 167 between scales
The number attached to a result depends on the scale's standard deviation. Near 167, switching scales can add or remove dozens of points for exactly the same rank.
167standard scale (SD 15), used by Wechsler tests and on this page
171older Stanford-Binet scale (SD 16)
207Cattell scale (SD 24), used by some older and online tests
So a "167" isn't always a 167. On the Cattell scale it corresponds to about 142 on the standard scale; on an SD 16 scale, about 163. Why IQ scales differ.
Who has been rated near an IQ of 167?
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.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgePoet and critic
Cox rated him 165 for ages 17 to 26, 2 points below 167. Cox's childhood rating for him was 175.
Estimate, not a test
François AragoPhysicist and astronomer
Cox rated him 165 for ages 17 to 26, 2 points below 167. 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.
Why one childhood test produced scores from 167 to 230
Under the old ratio formula, IQ equals mental age divided by real age, times 100. The answer depends on which mental age you take from the test record and which age you divide by, and for a ten-year-old a difference of a year in either changes the result by dozens of points.
That sensitivity is one reason modern tests switched to deviation scores, which compare a person with others of the same age. Vos Savant herself has said that even professional IQ tests are primitive measures of intelligence, a view many psychologists would share at this height.
Source: our article on the highest IQ in the world, which lists the original reports.
What does an IQ of 167 mean?
A confirmed 167 means a supervised extended-scale result in the top 0.0004% of your age group, in the "exceptionally gifted" band. It is far above the bars of Mensa, Intertel and the Triple Nine Society, though still short of the Mega Society's one in a million.
Where 167 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 167 is from other milestones
21 points above the Triple Nine and ISPE bar (146)a score of 167 is about 272 times rarer than 146
7 points above the ceiling of most professional tests (160)a score of 167 is about 8.0 times rarer than 160
4 points below the Mega Society's one-in-a-million level (171)reaching 171 is about 4 times rarer than 167
13 points below the start of the profoundly gifted band (180)reaching 180 is about 82 times rarer than 167
4.47 standard deviations above averageaverage is 100 and one standard deviation is 15 points
IQ 167 compared with nearby scores
| IQ | Percentile | Rarity | Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| 163 | 99.9986th | 1 in 74,930 | Exceptionally gifted |
| 165 | 99.99926th | 1 in 136,176 | Exceptionally gifted |
| 167 | 99.9996th | 1 in 251,738 | Exceptionally gifted |
| 169 | 99.99978th | 1 in 473,383 | Exceptionally gifted |
| 171 | 99.99988th | 1 in 905,541 | Exceptionally gifted |
Your questions about a 167 IQ
Is 167 a high IQ?
Yes. 167 is a very high IQ: about 1 person in 251,738 scores this high or higher, which puts it at the 99.9996th 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 167 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. 167 is very rare, yet achievements, not test scores, are what usually earn the word genius.
Can an online IQ test show a score of 167?
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 167 from nearby scores. A supervised Wechsler or Stanford-Binet assessment is needed to confirm it.
What is an IQ of 167 on the Cattell scale?
About 207. 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 167 is only about 142 on the standard scale.
What percentile is an IQ of 167?
An IQ of 167 is at about the 99.9996th percentile. Only about 0.0004% of people score 167 or higher.
What is Marilyn vos Savant's real IQ?
Nobody can say exactly. Her famous 228 came from a 1937 childhood Stanford-Binet scored with the old ratio formula, and other calculations from the same records give figures from 167 to 230. Ratio scores like these aren't comparable with modern IQ scores.
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 167 by combining several kinds of task. Learn more about spatial reasoning, verbal reasoning, processing speed, fluid vs crystallized intelligence and abstract reasoning, or try the free pattern recognition test.
Many famous IQ figures are guesses. See what is really known about Terence Tao's IQ, Einstein's IQ, Isaac Newton's IQ, Nikola Tesla's IQ, Stephen Hawking's IQ, Bill Gates' IQ, Elon Musk's IQ and Garry Kasparov'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 167 needs a supervised professional test.
Take the free IQ testPortraits are pencil-style sketches by Assessivo, based on: Thomas Babington Macaulay after Sir Francis Grant, public domain. Samuel Taylor Coleridge after Washington Allston (1814), public domain.