Universities: average IQ and student profiles

Estimated average IQs for 32 universities, from Caltech at about 152 down. Each profile covers the typical student, signature majors and notable alumni. The estimates come from SAT and ACT research, so read them as a lens on fit, not a ranking.

Harvard students average about 145. What's yours?

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All 32 universities

University	Location	Est. IQ
Caltech	Pasadena, CA	152
MIT	Cambridge, MA	150
Harvard University	Cambridge, MA	145
Stanford University	Stanford, CA	145
Carnegie Mellon University	Pittsburgh, PA	142
Princeton University	Princeton, NJ	142
University of Cambridge	Cambridge, UK	142
University of Chicago	Chicago, IL	142
University of Oxford	Oxford, UK	141
Columbia University	New York, NY	140
ETH Zürich	Zürich, Switzerland	140
Johns Hopkins University	Baltimore, MD	140
Seoul National University	Seoul, South Korea	140
Tsinghua University	Beijing, China	140
Yale University	New Haven, CT	140
Duke University	Durham, NC	138
Imperial College London	London, UK	138
Peking University	Beijing, China	138
University of Tokyo	Tokyo, Japan	138
Northwestern University	Evanston, IL	136
UC Berkeley	Berkeley, CA	136
IIT (Indian Institutes of Technology)	Multiple Campuses, India	135
National University of Singapore	Singapore	135
Technical University of Munich	Munich, Germany	135
University of Toronto	Toronto, Canada	132
McGill University	Montreal, Canada	130
University of Edinburgh	Edinburgh, Scotland	130
University of Michigan	Ann Arbor, MI	130
New York University	New York, NY	128
UCLA	Los Angeles, CA	128
University of Melbourne	Melbourne, Australia	125
University of Sydney	Sydney, Australia	123

Estimates from published SAT and ACT score data and research linking those tests to IQ (Frey & Detterman, 2004). They are not official university figures, and every campus has a wide spread of students.

What these numbers mean

Selective universities admit students with high test scores, and those scores correlate with IQ. That is all these estimates capture. They say nothing about any one student, and the spread inside a campus is far wider than the gaps between campuses.

The profiles take a psychology-first view of each place: the traits it selects for, what it rewards and the student archetypes it amplifies.

Keep exploring

Average IQ by college majorEvery major, ranked
Score convertersSAT, ACT, GRE and more to IQ
Average IQ by professionPublished figures by job
IQ scores explainedPercentile and rarity for every score

What's your IQ?

A campus average hides a wide spread of students. Your own score from 25 visual reasoning questions says far more about you.

Take the IQ test

25 questions · about 12 minutes