"Genius IQ" is one of the most searched phrases about intelligence, and one of the most misunderstood. There is no official scientific cutoff for genius, but there are useful landmarks.
The bell curve in one minute
Modern IQ scales are built so the average is 100 and about two out of three people score between 85 and 115. Each step away from the middle is rarer than the last.
- 115: better than about 84 percent of people.
- 130: around the top 2 percent, roughly 98 percent of people score lower.
- 140: about the top 0.4 percent, or around 1 in 250.
- 145: about the top 0.13 percent, roughly 1 in 740.
What Mensa asks for
Mensa, the high-IQ society, accepts people who score in the top 2 percent on an approved, supervised test. On most scales that is roughly an IQ of 130 or a little higher, but the exact number depends on the test.
Is 140 "genius"?
Popular culture often draws the line at 140, and some old classification tables used the word. Modern psychologists mostly avoid it. High IQ describes reasoning ability on a test. "Genius" in the everyday sense also needs creativity, persistence, opportunity and luck. Plenty of people with modest scores changed the world, and plenty of high scorers never did anything remarkable with it.
Beware of the claims above 160
Standard tests are not accurate that far out: too few people exist at that level to norm the scale properly. Any online "IQ 180" is marketing, not measurement.
Want to know where you land? Try the Real IQ Test and read the IQ scale and score chart.