IQ 76

An IQ of 76 is 24 points below the average of 100, or 1.60 standard deviations. This site classes it as Below Average. About 5.5% of people score at or below 76, which in a class of 30 is roughly 2 people. It sits 6 points past the 70 mark and 9 short of 85.

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.

A result in the 70s often reflects the test as much as the person. Timed abstract puzzles are unfamiliar to many adults, especially anyone who left education a while ago or who learned in a different language.

If you want to understand your result, think about which questions felt hard. Running out of time, losing track of a rule and second-guessing yourself are different problems, and each one has a different fix.

Online scores are estimates with wide error bars. For 76, a 5-point window either way runs from about 71, where 1 in 38 score that low or lower, to 81, where it is 1 in 10.

Professional assessments combine several subtests (verbal, visual, memory and speed) and look at the pattern between them, not just one total. A single online total cannot show that pattern.

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.

Small day-to-day changes are enough to move a score around 76. A shift of 5 points, from 76 to 81, would move you from the 5.5th to the 10.3rd percentile, so it helps to know what causes those swings.

• Stress and mood. Worry takes up working memory. People who feel anxious about tests often score below their usual level.
• 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.
• Timing and comfort. Hunger, a headache or testing late at night can all pull a score down on the day.

On a bell curve with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, about 5.5% of people score 76 or lower. Applied to whole populations:

Scoring 76 or lower is about 1 in 18. At 81 or lower it becomes 1 in 10, and at 71 or lower 1 in 38, which shows how quickly the curve fills up towards the middle.

What your 76 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 76 really means somewhere from 71 to 81. Online tests are less precise than that.

Which scale was it on? A 76 reported on an SD 16 scale converts to about 78 on the usual SD 15 scale, and one from an SD 24 scale (seen in some Cattell-style results) to about 85. Check which scale your score report used.

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 76. That is not because famous people score higher. Estimates are only attempted for people with extraordinary records, which leaves ordinary scores unrepresented.

Nearby scores and the round-number landmarks, so you can see how quickly the percentile changes around 76. Every row links to that score's page.

People with an IQ of 76 typically score about 720 on the SAT and about 12 on the ACT composite. Scores vary a lot from person to person, so the range shows where about four in five land.