IQ 91

If you lined up 100 random adults by score, a 91 would put you at about position 27 from the bottom. That is inside the 85 to 115 band that roughly 46 million people in the UK share.

Within this range, scores a few points apart are closer together than the test's own margin of error. A 88 and a 94 could easily be the same person on different days.

Scores near the middle of the curve are the most precisely measured, because tests have the most data there. A 91 is one of the more trustworthy numbers an IQ test can give you.

The 9-point gap between 91 and 100 is noticeable on a timed test but rarely in ordinary life. You would not spot it in a conversation or at work.

School results in this range depend heavily on teaching, effort and interest. The same score turns up in students with top grades and in students who struggle.

Being in the average range says nothing about ambition. Careers, qualifications and creative work are open across it, and many people in it are highly skilled in their field.

An overall 91 can hide a very uneven profile. Two people with the same total can be strong at quite different things, so the useful question is which kinds of question went well for you.

• Lean on structure. Checklists, notes and routines free up working memory for the hard part of a problem.
• Give unfamiliar problems time. Speed is where average scores differ most, and most real decisions are not timed.
• Protect sleep and focus. Both beat cramming for anything you need to remember.

Scoring 91 or lower is a 27% share of everyone. Scaled up to whole populations, that works out as:

About 27% of people score 91 or lower, compared with 18% at 86 or lower and 39% at 96 or lower. Five points here changes the share by about 12 percentage points.

What your 91 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 91 really means somewhere from 86 to 96. 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 91 came from a test using an SD of 16, it is about 92 on the SD 15 scale. From an SD 24 scale, used by some Cattell-style reports, it is about 94.

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

No historical figure on this site has an estimate close to 91. Retrospective estimates cluster between about 115 and 250 because they are only made for people with exceptional achievements. That is a selection effect, not a sign that famous or successful people cannot score 91.

Nearby scores and the round-number landmarks, so you can see how quickly the percentile changes around 91. Every row links to that score's page.

People with an IQ of 91 typically score about 870 on the SAT and about 15 on the ACT composite. Scores vary a lot from person to person, so the range shows where about four in five land.