Is 140 a good IQ?

A 140 beats 99.62% of people. It is 10 points past the two standard deviation line, and 5 short of three standard deviations at 145.

Gifted is an education label, not a medical one. Schools and programmes set their own cutoffs, often around 130, and many use several measures rather than a single score.

A high score does not come with high grades attached. Motivation, study habits and fit with the teaching style decide a lot of what happens at school and work.

Mensa, the best-known high-IQ society, accepts people who score at or above the 98th percentile on an approved, supervised test. On a scale with a standard deviation of 15 that line is usually quoted as 130, so 140 is 10 points above it. LifeScore is not affiliated with Mensa, and online results, including ours, are not accepted as evidence.

Near the line, the margin of error matters. A single result of 140 is consistent with anything from about 135 to 145, so a supervised retest would very likely still clear 130.

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. 140 clears the first line but not the second.

What does a 140 feel like from the inside? Accounts vary a lot, but a few themes come up again and again:

• Group work can be frustrating when others need more steps than you do, which makes explaining your reasoning a skill worth building.
• Being quick is not the same as being right. Checking your working protects you from confident mistakes.
• Uneven profiles are common, for example very strong visual reasoning alongside average processing speed.

If IQ follows the standard bell curve, 0.38% of people score 140 or higher. Here is what that share means across whole populations:

Compare the neighbours: 135 or higher is about 1 in 102, 140 or higher is 1 in 261, and 145 or higher is 1 in 741. Each point up here adds roughly 22% to the rarity.

What your 140 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 140 really means somewhere from 135 to 145. Online tests are less precise than that.

Which scale was it on? Score reports do not always say. On the common SD 15 scale your 140 stands as it is. If the report used SD 16 it equals about 138, and if it used SD 24 about 125. The percentile follows the converted number.

The gifted range is where many retrospective estimates for historical leaders, writers and activists land. These sit near 140, 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.

Rough benchmarks from our profiles that sit within a few points of 140. Degree and university figures are estimates derived from admissions-test averages, not measured IQs.

140 is 2.67 standard deviations above the mean, about 1 in 261 people. It is still within the range where major tests measure reasonably well.

Studies following high-ability children, such as the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth, found disproportionate achievement in STEM, academia and creative work. Students at this level often feel underchallenged by standard pacing.

The Triple Nine Society top 0.1% line sits a few points higher, at about 146.

How 140 stacks up against the scores just around it and the round numbers people usually ask about. Each score links to its own page.

People with an IQ of 140 typically score about 1530 on the SAT and about 33 on the ACT composite. Scores vary a lot from person to person, so the range shows where about four in five land.