IQ 126

Only about 1 in 24 people score 126 or higher. That puts you 11 points into the band between one and two standard deviations above the mean, where this site uses the label Superior.

This is a common range among people in academic and professional work, but it is far from a requirement. Plenty of people outside it do the same jobs well.

Most people at 126 were never labelled gifted at school, and many never took a formal test. It is the kind of score people underrate because it does not come with a label.

No job requires a 126, and no score guarantees one. What research does show is that general reasoning ability predicts training speed and job performance, most strongly in complex roles. Large meta-analyses such as Schmidt and Hunter (1998) are the usual reference.

In most careers the advantage shows most at the start, when there is a lot to learn quickly. Later on, experience and judgement matter more.

Where you end up depends heavily on interest, persistence and people skills. None of those is measured by an IQ test.

Compared with someone at 100, a person at 126 is 1.73 standard deviations quicker on the kind of reasoning IQ tests sample. Day to day that usually looks like needing fewer examples to grasp a new idea, not like knowing things without effort.

• You tend to spot the pattern in a problem sooner, especially with numbers, diagrams or rules.
• Long instructions are easier to hold in mind without writing them down.
• Slow explanations can feel tedious, and you may prefer to skip ahead.

On a bell curve with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, about 4.2% of people score 126 or higher. Applied to whole populations:

An IQ of 126 or higher is 1.9 times rarer than 121 or higher, and 131 or higher is 2.1 times rarer again. At this point on the curve, each extra point makes a score about 16% rarer.

What your 126 could really be. Even a good supervised test has a margin of error of roughly 5 points either side. A true score anywhere from 121 to 131 would be consistent with a 126, which spans the 91.9th to the 98.1st percentile. Short online tests have wider margins.

Which scale was it on? Most modern tests use a standard deviation of 15, which is what this page assumes. If your 126 came from a test using an SD of 16, it is about 124 on the SD 15 scale. From an SD 24 scale, used by some Cattell-style reports, it is about 116.

Retrospective estimates for historical figures rarely go this low, because they are only made for people with exceptional achievements. A few sit near 126. None of these are test scores. They are estimates from biographical evidence, and each profile explains its basis.

A few degree, university and job profiles on this site carry IQ benchmarks close to 126. Treat the education figures as rough estimates from admissions-test data rather than measured IQs.

The scores one and five points either side of 126, plus the round numbers from 100 to 150, side by side. Tap any score for its full page.

People with an IQ of 126 typically score about 1360 on the SAT and about 28 on the ACT composite. Scores vary a lot from person to person, so the range shows where about four in five land.