IQ 160

Taken literally, the bell curve puts 160 at 1 in 31,600: about 2,200 people in the UK and about 260,000 people worldwide. Treat that as an illustration of the model rather than a head count.

No test has enough people in its norm sample to check its accuracy at 160. In a 2,200-person sample the bell curve expects about 0.07 people at 160 or higher.

Some tests publish extended norms above 160 for exceptional children. These rest on very small samples and on modelling, so they are best treated as rough rankings.

If someone tells you they have a 160, the first question is where the number came from. The usual answers:

• Ratio IQ. Early childhood tests divided mental age by real age. A 6-year-old solving puzzles like a typical 9.6-year-old got a ratio IQ of 160. Modern deviation IQs do not work this way.
• Different scales. Some tests use a standard deviation of 24, so a 160 there is about 138 on the usual SD 15 scale.
• Unnormed online quizzes. A test with no norm data can print any number. Very high outputs usually say more about the scoring than the person.

Nobody in history has a measured IQ of 160. The highest estimates on this site, for figures such as Isaac Newton and Leonardo da Vinci, come from reading their work and lives, not from tests. 42 profiles here are estimated at 160 or more.

Two people with identical estimates can have very different evidence behind them. Each profile explains what its estimate is based on and how confident anyone can be.

Scoring 160 or higher is a 0.0032% share of everyone. Scaled up to whole populations, that works out as:

An IQ of 160 or higher is 3.9 times rarer than 155 or higher, and 165 or higher is 4.3 times rarer again. At this point on the curve, each extra point makes a score about 33% rarer.

What your 160 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 160 really means somewhere from 155 to 165. 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 160 stands as it is. If the report used SD 16 it equals about 156, and if it used SD 24 about 138. The percentile follows the converted number.

Estimates this high are reserved for a small group of scientists, artists and thinkers. These sit near 160. Every figure below is a retrospective estimate, not a measured score. Open a profile to see the evidence and how confident anyone can be.

160 is four standard deviations above the mean, about 1 in 31,600 people. It is as far above average as 40 is below it.

Many major tests have a published full-scale ceiling around 160, so scores above it are hard to measure reliably. Profoundly gifted children sometimes follow radically accelerated or self-directed education paths, and specialists in gifted education argue for individual plans rather than age-graded defaults.

How 160 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 160 typically score about 1600 on the SAT and about 36 on the ACT composite. Scores vary a lot from person to person, so the range shows where about four in five land.