IQ 71

71 is below the middle of the curve, but it is far from unusual. Around 1.8 million people in the UK would score 71 or lower on the same scale. It works out at 1.93 standard deviations under the mean, in the band this site calls Below Average.

A score in the 70s on one online test is not a diagnosis of anything. Only a qualified professional, such as a clinical or educational psychologist, can assess anything clinical, and they never rely on a single number.

Plenty of valuable skills are learned mainly through practice. Trades, care work, hospitality, sport, driving and music all reward repetition and experience, and people keep improving at them for decades.

Retest gains of a few points are well documented once a format is familiar. First attempts at any unfamiliar kind of test tend to be the least representative.

Think of 71 as the middle of a window. On a second attempt the same person could plausibly land at 76, which is higher than 5.5% of people, or at 66. That is before counting the extra noise an unsupervised online test adds.

Online tests are not normed the way clinical tests are. Their scores are estimates, and the people who take them are not a representative sample of the population.

Reading level matters as well. If the instructions or questions lean on vocabulary, anyone reading in a second language is at a disadvantage that has nothing to do with reasoning.

Near 71 the curve is steep, so a few points change your percentile a lot. Going from 71 to 74 would lift you from the 2.7th to the 4.2nd percentile. These are the usual reasons scores swing:

• Stress and mood. Worry takes up working memory. People who feel anxious about tests often score below their usual level.
• Language. Questions that rely on words or written rules favour native speakers. Visual puzzles reduce this effect but do not remove it.
• Familiarity. People who have seen matrix-style puzzles before tend to do better on them. That is a practice effect, not a change in underlying ability.

Scoring 71 or lower is a 2.7% share of everyone. Scaled up to whole populations, that works out as:

Scoring 71 or lower is about 1 in 38. At 76 or lower it becomes 1 in 18, and at 66 or lower 1 in 85, which shows how quickly the curve fills up towards the middle.

What your 71 could really be. If you retook a well-made test, landing at 66 or at 76 would be unremarkable. That is the difference between beating 1.2% and 5.5% of people, and short online tests are noisier still.

Which scale was it on? Score reports do not always say. On the common SD 15 scale your 71 stands as it is. If the report used SD 16 it equals about 73, and if it used SD 24 about 82. The percentile follows the converted number.

Nobody famous has a verified IQ in most cases, and retrospective estimates are only made for a narrow group.

Our historical estimates start at 115, so nobody sits close to 71. That is not because famous people score higher. Estimates are only attempted for people with extraordinary records, which leaves ordinary scores unrepresented.

The scores one and five points either side of 71, plus the round numbers from 100 to 150, side by side. Tap any score for its full page.

People with an IQ of 71 typically score about 670 on the SAT and about 11 on the ACT composite. Scores vary a lot from person to person, so the range shows where about four in five land.