Isaac NewtonPhysicist and mathematician
Cox rated him 170 for ages 17 to 26, the same as this page's score. Cox's childhood rating for him was 130.
Is 170 a high IQ?
Yes, extraordinarily. An IQ of 170 is higher than about 99.99984% of people, roughly 1 in 653,327. In Catharine Cox's 1926 study, Isaac Newton, John Milton, Lord Byron, Victor Hugo and the mathematician Laplace were all rated at about 170 for their young adulthood. And Leta Hollingworth singled out 170 as the level where children "have to contend with loneliness".
99.99984thpercentile
1 in 653,327score 170 or higher
Exceptionally giftedlevel of giftedness
170IQ scoreTop 0.00015%
170 on the IQ bell curve
At 70 points above the mean of 100 (4.67 standard deviations), 170 sits where the curve has almost flattened onto the axis. Only 0.00015% of people score here or higher; on the left chart that group is the barely visible orange edge.
170 is four and two-thirds standard deviations above average: about 12,600 people in the whole world would score this high or higher.
Reading an IQ of 170
170 is a favourite number for celebrity IQ lists, and almost none of the figures hold up. Chess grandmaster Judit Polgár, often credited with 170, has no record of any IQ test, as our famous people guide found. The 170s that do have a documented basis are Cox's historical estimates, made from records of each person's youth, which are informed guesses rather than measurements.
Hollingworth's warning is the more useful part of the story. Writing in the 1930s, she observed that children "of 170 IQ and beyond are too intelligent to be understood by the general run of persons with whom they make contact". She did not think this was inevitable; she thought it was a problem of finding the right company.
How many people have an IQ of 170?
How big a group do you need before someone in it is likely to score 170? About 653,327 people. Watch the crowd grow to that size.
A crowd of 653,327 people
653,327
One dot per person, and on average only one of them, shown in orange, scores 170 or more.
People scoring 170 or higher, by population
| Worldwide (8.2 billion people) | about 12,600 |
| India | about 2,240 |
| United States | about 523 |
| United Kingdom | about 106 |
| Canada | about 64 |
| Australia | about 42 |
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 170?
Entry to a high-IQ society depends on a percentile, which each one turns into a score per accepted test. Measured under supervision, 170 meets 5 of the 6 bars; the next, Mega Society, needs about 171.
-
MensaTop 2% (98th percentile) on an approved, supervised test130met
-
IntertelTop 1% (99th percentile); lists a Wechsler full-scale IQ of 135135met
-
Triple Nine Society99.9th percentile; lists a WAIS full-scale IQ of 146146met
-
International Society for Philosophical Enquiry99.9th percentile; lists a WAIS-III or WAIS-IV full-scale IQ of 146146met
-
Prometheus Society1 in 30,000 (99.997th percentile), four standard deviations above average160met
-
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 170?
The adult Wechsler test and the Stanford-Binet 5 both stop at 160, so neither can give a 170. 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 0.0034 of them at 170 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 165 to 175 around a 170. 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 170 between scales
The number attached to a result depends on the scale's standard deviation. Near 170, switching scales can add or remove dozens of points for exactly the same rank.
170standard scale (SD 15), used by Wechsler tests and on this page
175older Stanford-Binet scale (SD 16)
212Cattell scale (SD 24), used by some older and online tests
So a "170" isn't always a 170. On the Cattell scale it corresponds to about 144 on the standard scale; on an SD 16 scale, about 166. Why IQ scales differ.
Who has been rated near an IQ of 170?
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.
Victor HugoNovelist and poet
Cox rated him 170 for ages 17 to 26, the same as this page's score. Cox's childhood rating for him was 150.
John MiltonPoet
Cox rated him 170 for ages 17 to 26, the same as this page's score. 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.
Who is said to have a 170 IQ?
These names are often given an IQ at or close to 170. Not one of the figures is backed by a published test result.
JP
170No evidence of a test
Judit Polgár
The strongest female chess player in history, but no record of any IQ test could be found behind the figure.
Sources for every claim are listed in our celebrity IQ list.
"Too infrequent to find many congenial companions"
Hollingworth wrote that children of 170 IQ and beyond "are too infrequent to find many congenial companions. They have to contend with loneliness and with personal isolation from their contemporaries throughout the period of immaturity."
Her remedy, developed over two decades of work, was to bring such children together with intellectual peers. Modern research on acceleration, such as Miraca Gross's 20-year Australian study, points the same way: the isolation is real, but it responds to how schools and families organise a child's learning and friendships.
Source: Hollingworth, L. S. (1942), Children Above 180 IQ Stanford-Binet: Origin and Development, World Book Company (Project Gutenberg edition).
What does an IQ of 170 mean?
A confirmed IQ of 170 means reasoning at a level found in about three people in two million. It is in the "exceptionally gifted" band, well beyond the ceiling of standard clinical tests, and only extended scales can report it. On the Cattell scale, the same rank would be printed as 212.
Where 170 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 170 is from other milestones
24 points above the Triple Nine and ISPE bar (146)a score of 170 is about 707 times rarer than 146
10 points above the ceiling of most professional tests (160)a score of 170 is about 21 times rarer than 160
1 point below the Mega Society's one-in-a-million level (171)reaching 171 is about 1 times rarer than 170
10 points below the start of the profoundly gifted band (180)reaching 180 is about 32 times rarer than 170
4.67 standard deviations above averageaverage is 100 and one standard deviation is 15 points
IQ 170 compared with nearby scores
| IQ | Percentile | Rarity | Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| 166 | 99.99945th | 1 in 184,756 | Exceptionally gifted |
| 168 | 99.9997th | 1 in 344,471 | Exceptionally gifted |
| 170 | 99.99984th | 1 in 653,327 | Exceptionally gifted |
| 172 | 99.99992nd | 1 in 1,260,512 | Exceptionally gifted |
| 174 | 99.999959th | 1 in 2,474,083 | Exceptionally gifted |
Your questions about a 170 IQ
Is 170 a high IQ?
Yes. 170 is a very high IQ: about 1 person in 653,327 scores this high or higher, which puts it at the 99.99984th 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 170?
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 170 from nearby scores. A supervised Wechsler or Stanford-Binet assessment is needed to confirm it.
What is an IQ of 170 on the Cattell scale?
About 212. 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 170 is only about 144 on the standard scale.
What percentile is an IQ of 170?
An IQ of 170 is at about the 99.99984th percentile. Only about 0.00015% of people score 170 or higher.
How rare is an IQ of 170?
About 1 person in 653,327 scores 170 or higher, on the standard bell curve. Across the world's population of about 8.2 billion, that would be roughly 12,600 people.
Who has an IQ of 170?
No living person has a publicly documented IQ test score of 170. Lists credit figures such as Judit Polgár with 170 without any test record. In Catharine Cox's 1926 historical study, Isaac Newton, John Milton, Lord Byron, Victor Hugo and Pierre-Simon Laplace were estimated at about 170 for ages 17 to 26.
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 170 by combining several kinds of task. Learn more about fluid vs crystallized intelligence, abstract reasoning, spatial reasoning, verbal reasoning and processing speed, or try the free pattern recognition test.
Many famous IQ figures are guesses. See what is really known about 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?
Try the free Assessivo IQ test: 36 questions, about 25 minutes, and an estimated score up to 145. Confirming a result as high as 170 needs a supervised professional test.
Take the free IQ testPortraits are pencil-style sketches by Assessivo, based on: Isaac Newton after Godfrey Kneller (1689), public domain. Victor Hugo from a photograph by Étienne Carjat (1876), public domain. John Milton after an anonymous portrait (about 1629), public domain.