Question
What is considered a high IQ?
Short answer
Scores of 120 and above are usually called high. The WAIS-IV labels 120 to 129 Superior and 130 and above Very Superior. A 120 is higher than about 91% of people, and a 130 is higher than about 97.7%. There is no official cutoff for the word high itself.
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The labels test publishers use
IQ manuals do not say high or low. They use named bands. On the WAIS-IV, 110 to 119 is High Average, 120 to 129 is Superior and 130 and above is Very Superior (Wikipedia: IQ classification). When people say a high IQ, they usually mean one of the top two bands.
| Score | WAIS-IV label | Higher than about |
|---|---|---|
| 110 | High Average | 74.8% |
| 120 | Superior | 90.9% |
| 130 | Very Superior | 97.7% |
| 140 | Very Superior | 99.62% |
The percentages follow from the normal curve with mean 100 and standard deviation 15. About 95% of people score between 70 and 130 (the 68-95-99.7 rule), so anything at 130 or above is in the top few percent.
Try one · Quantitative Reasoning
Which number comes next?
9, 12, 16, 21, 27, 34, ?
Tap the option you think is right, or show the answer.
Show the answer
The next number is 42 (option 1).
How to solve it
- Find the gaps between neighbors: 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
- The gaps between the numbers grow by 1 each time.
- So the next gap is 8, and 34 + 8 = 42.
That was 1 puzzle. The full test has 25.
Why the boundaries are soft
Every IQ score has a margin of error. Clinical manuals report a confidence interval, often around plus or minus 5 points at 95% (Wechsler, 2008). A measured 118 and a measured 122 sit in different bands but may not reflect a real difference. Read the band as a neighborhood, not a line.
High compared with whom
IQ is always relative to people your own age, on the scale the test uses. A score that sounds high on one test can be ordinary on a scale with a larger standard deviation. See why scores differ between tests, the genius question and what counts as a good IQ.
Sources
- IQ classification. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_classification
- 68-95-99.7 rule. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68%E2%80%9395%E2%80%9399.7_rule
- Wechsler, D. (2008). WAIS-IV Technical and Interpretive Manual. Pearson.