Question
What percentage of people have an IQ over 130?
Short answer
About 2.3% of people have an IQ of 130 or higher on the standard scale (mean 100, standard deviation 15), roughly 1 in 44. About 0.4% score 140 or higher, and about 0.04% score 150 or higher. These shares follow from the bell curve that IQ scores are built on.
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Share of people at or above each score
| IQ | Share at or above | About 1 in | Percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| 110 | 25.2% | 4 | 74.8 |
| 115 | 15.9% | 6 | 84.1 |
| 120 | 9.1% | 11 | 90.9 |
| 125 | 4.8% | 21 | 95.2 |
| 130 | 2.3% | 44 | 97.7 |
| 135 | 0.98% | 100 | 99.02 |
| 140 | 0.38% | 260 | 99.62 |
| 145 | 0.13% | 740 | 99.87 |
| 150 | 0.043% | 2,300 | 99.96 |
| 160 | 0.003% | 32,000 | 99.997 |
Why the numbers come from math, not a census
Modern IQ tests are scaled so that each age group has a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15 (Wikipedia: Intelligence quotient). Once a scale is built that way, the share of people above any score is fixed by the normal distribution. About 95% of people fall between 70 and 130, which leaves about 2.5% on each side, and the exact figure above 130 is 2.3% (the 68-95-99.7 rule). Nobody counted the world; the test makers fitted the scale to their reference sample.
Try one · Pattern Recognition
Which tile comes next?
Tap the option you think is right, or show the answer.
Show the answer
The missing tile shows four solid diamonds (option 1).
How to solve it
- Compare neighboring tiles and name what changes each time.
- From tile to tile, one more diamond is added.
- The fill cycles solid, outline and hatched, then starts again.
- Everything else stays the same from tile to tile.
- The last tile shows three hatched diamonds. Apply each change once more.
- So the missing tile shows four solid diamonds.
That was 1 puzzle. The full test has 25.
What 130 means on the label scale
130 is where the WAIS-IV's top label, Very Superior, begins (Wikipedia: IQ classification). It is two standard deviations above the mean. Mensa's cutoff, the 98th percentile, sits just above it, at about 131 on this scale. See the top 2 percent and what IQ you need for Mensa.
Reading high scores with care
The further a score is from 100, the fewer reference people sit near it and the wider its margin of error. That is why a careful report gives a range rather than a single number. For any score you want to check, use the IQ percentile calculator, or turn a percentile back into a score with the percentile to IQ converter.
Sources
- 68-95-99.7 rule. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68%E2%80%9395%E2%80%9399.7_rule
- Intelligence quotient. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient
- IQ classification. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_classification