IQ 131

131 is in what is usually called the gifted range, 2.07 standard deviations above average. You would outscore 98.1% of people, and only about 1 in 52 score this high or higher. It sits 1 point past the 130 mark and 14 short of 145.

At this level the advantage can show as speed and depth with abstract material. Standard explanations may feel slow, and working things out from first principles may feel natural.

Lewis Terman's study began in 1921 and followed about 1,500 children who scored roughly 135 or higher. Most grew up healthy and successful, but few became famous, which says a lot about what a score can and cannot predict.

The 98th percentile is the line Mensa uses, and on the standard SD 15 scale it is usually quoted as 130. 131 is right on that boundary. Entry needs an approved, supervised test. LifeScore has no connection with Mensa, and online scores are not accepted.

The same 98th percentile looks like different numbers on different scales. On an SD 16 scale it is about 132, and on an SD 24 scale about 148, which is where many confusing '148 IQ' claims come from.

Other societies set higher bars. Intertel asks for the top 1%, which starts at about 135, and the Triple Nine Society asks for the top 0.1%, about 146. 131 falls short of both.

There is no single experience of scoring 131. These are patterns people in the gifted range commonly describe, not rules, and plenty of people here feel entirely ordinary day to day.

• Topics can absorb you for long stretches, and depth may matter more to you than breadth.
• Group work can be frustrating when others need more steps than you do, which makes explaining your reasoning a skill worth building.
• Routine work can get boring fast, so variety and challenge tend to matter.

On a bell curve with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, about 1.9% of people score 131 or higher. Applied to whole populations:

Going from 126 to 131 makes a score 2.1 times rarer, and going on to 136 multiplies the rarity by another 2.4. Near 131, each single point adds about 18% to the rarity.

What your 131 could really be. Treat any single score as the centre of a range. For a good supervised test, about 5 points either side is typical, so 131 really means somewhere from 126 to 136. Online tests are less precise than that.

Which scale was it on? Most modern tests use a standard deviation of 15, which is what this page assumes. If your 131 came from a test using an SD of 16, it is about 129 on the SD 15 scale. From an SD 24 scale, used by some Cattell-style reports, it is about 119.

The gifted range is where many retrospective estimates for historical leaders, writers and activists land. These sit near 131, with the figures people look up most listed first. None of these are test scores. They are estimates from biographical evidence, and each profile explains its basis.

Our degree, university and job profiles carry rough IQ benchmarks. These are the ones within a few points of 131. The education figures are derived from admissions-test averages, not from IQ testing.

The scores one and five points either side of 131, plus the round numbers from 100 to 150, side by side. Tap any score for its full page.

People with an IQ of 131 typically score about 1420 on the SAT and about 30 on the ACT composite. Scores vary a lot from person to person, so the range shows where about four in five land.