What Does an IQ of 145 Mean? How Rare Is It and Is It Genius?

An IQ of 145 is three standard deviations above the average of 100 on the standard scale (mean 100, standard deviation 15). That is the 99.87th percentile: about 1 person in 741 scores 145 or higher. The Stanford-Binet 5 labels everything from 145 up “very gifted or highly advanced”, the Wechsler tests put 145 in the same top band as 130, and a printed 145 on the Cattell scale is only the 97th percentile. This guide shows where 145 sits on the bell curve, what the labels mean, how far to trust a single score and what happens when it is retested.

• Percentile: 99.87th on a standard deviation 15 scale (our normal-curve arithmetic); 99.75th if the 145 was printed on a standard deviation 16 scale; 97.0th on the standard deviation 24 Cattell scale.
• Rarity: 0.135% of people score 145 or higher, about 1 in 741. Of the world's roughly 8 billion people, the curve puts about 11 million at 145 or above (model arithmetic, not a head count).
• Label: Very gifted or highly advanced on the Stanford-Binet 5 (145 to 160); Very Superior on the WAIS-IV and Extremely High on the WISC-V, the same labels those tests use from 130.
• Precision: with a standard error of 2 to 3 points, a reported 145 fits a true standing of roughly 140 to 150.
• Evidence behind the number: a Wechsler norm sample of about 2,200 people would contain only about 3 people this high, so the top of the norm table is largely the curve extended.

To check any score yourself, enter it into our IQ percentile calculator, or turn it into another test's scale with the IQ score converter. The neighbouring pages in this series are an IQ of 140 and an IQ of 150; for every band at once, read IQ ranges.

How rare is an IQ of 145?

On the standard scale an IQ of 145 is exactly three standard deviations above the mean. On a normal curve that is the 99.865th percentile: 99.865% of the reference sample scored lower and 0.135% scored 145 or higher, one person in 741. The whole 145 to 159 band holds about 0.13% of people (1 in 759), and everything from 160 up about 0.003% (1 in 31,600). Our page on the IQ bell curve shows the shape.

Read the table as a ladder that narrows fast: each five-point step above 140 makes the score roughly three times rarer (1 in 261, 1 in 741, 1 in 2,330). A 145 is about 2.8 times rarer than a 140 and about 3.1 times more common than a 150. For how this arithmetic is built, see how rare a high IQ score actually is.

Is 145 IQ genius?

There is no official IQ cut-off for genius. The word was attached to scores over 140 in Terman's 1916 table for the first Stanford-Binet revision, which called them “near genius or genius”, and the habit stuck. No current Wechsler or Stanford-Binet manual defines it. What 145 does earn is a place in the top 0.14%. Françoys Gagné's model of giftedness defines “highly gifted” as the top 1 in 1,000, and the IQ often quoted for that level is 145, although one in 1,000 on this scale works out at about 146 (our arithmetic).

For the wider question see is 130 IQ genius?, what a genius IQ level is and where celebrity IQ numbers come from.

What is a 145 on other IQ scales?

The standard deviation is a publishing choice, and it changes what a printed 145 means. Wechsler tests and the current Stanford-Binet use 15, older Stanford-Binet forms and several school ability tests use 16, and the Cattell scales use 24.

A Cattell 145 is therefore about a Wechsler 128, and the Cattell score that matches a Wechsler 145 is 172. It also falls just short of the 148 that matches a Wechsler 130, the Mensa line on that scale. The conversion has two steps: subtract 100, divide by the scale's standard deviation, then multiply by 15 and add 100. The standard deviation 15 vs 16 explainer walks through the arithmetic, and the Mensa guide applies it to a well-known cut-off.

How accurate is a score of 145?

Not very, at the level of single points. Every score carries a standard error of measurement, commonly 2 to 3 points on a full-scale adult battery, which gives a 95% interval of about 5 points either side. A reported 145 is best read as 140 to 150. The error is no worse at 145 than elsewhere in principle, but the evidence behind the number is thinnest here: a sample of 2,200 people holds about three people this high, and near a test's ceiling there is less information left to separate people (why test scores stop near 160). Our explainer an IQ score is a range, not a number shows how to read the band, and how to read an IQ test report shows where a real report prints it.

What happens when a 145 is retested?

Scores regress toward the average when they are repeated, because part of what made the first score extreme was chance. For two tests on one scale, the expected second score is 100 plus the correlation between the tests times the distance of the first score from 100. The table applies that formula to a 145 using correlations reported in studies of how stable cognitive scores are.

These are group averages on an idealised model, not predictions for any one person. The first three rows come from one study of 11,119 children whose tests changed with age, so a change in the test itself adds to the drop (what 11,119 children show). The adult row is the mean rank-order stability for age 20 and a five-year gap in a meta-analysis of 205 longitudinal studies (Breit and colleagues, 2024). A retest a few weeks later on the same test would regress far less, because the correlation is much higher. Our page on regression to the mean explains the effect.

Does 145 qualify for Mensa and other high-IQ societies?

Yes for Mensa, which takes roughly the top 2%, about 130 on a Wechsler scale; a 145 clears that line by 15 points. The Triple Nine Society asks for the 99.9th percentile, which works out at about 146 on this scale, so a strict reading puts a 145 a point short, although societies publish their own cut-off tables for each accepted test and those can differ from the arithmetic. The Prometheus Society asks for the 99.997th percentile, about 160. See high-IQ societies and Mensa IQ score requirements.

What does an IQ of 145 predict?

Higher scores keep predicting better outcomes through the top of the range, but the link is a tendency in groups, not a promise for a person. At the far end, a long-running US study followed 320 youths identified before age 13 as top 1 in 10,000 in mathematical or verbal reasoning for nearly three decades, and found many of them in leadership positions in business, health care, law, the professoriate and STEM (Kell, Lubinski and Benbow, 2013). That is a rarer group than 145. For school and income outcomes, see does IQ predict school success and does IQ predict income.

Why do online tests say 145?

A short quiz that reports 145 is not comparable with a Wechsler or Stanford-Binet result. Online tests are untimed or loosely timed, unsupervised and often normed on whoever clicked, and some print scores above the 160 that supervised tests stop at. The same logic applies to quizzes that hand a pet an IQ: with no norm sample there is no test result behind the number (see cat IQ). Look for the test name, the scale and the date before trusting a number; what to check before trusting an online score sets out the checks, and what makes an IQ test official explains the difference.

If you scored 145

Treat it as roughly 140 to 150 on the scale and test it was measured on. Check that it was a full-scale score from a named test, note the standard deviation, and expect a retest to land a little lower. If you want your own number on a stated scale with its percentile and margin of error, take our IQ test.

Quick answers about an IQ of 145

• Is 145 a good IQ? It is a very high score, in the top 0.14% on the standard scale.
• What percentile is a 145 IQ? The 99.87th on a standard deviation 15 scale.
• How rare is a 145 IQ? About 1 in 741.
• Is 145 IQ genius? There is no official cut-off. Terman's 1916 table used scores over 140, and “highly gifted” is usually set at about 145.
• Is 145 enough for Mensa? Yes. The Triple Nine Society line is about a point higher.
• How accurate is it? Read a reported 145 as roughly 140 to 150.

Sources

• Breit, M., Scherrer, V., Tucker-Drob, E.M. and Preckel, F. (2024): The stability of cognitive abilities: a meta-analytic review of longitudinal studies, Psychological Bulletin, 150(4), 399-439.
• Kell, H.J., Lubinski, D. and Benbow, C.P. (2013): Who rises to the top? Early indicators, Psychological Science, 24(5), 648-659.
• Terman, L.M. (1916), The Measurement of Intelligence, Houghton Mifflin, p. 79 (classification of IQs).
• Gagné, F. (2021), Differentiating Giftedness from Talent: The DMGT Perspective on Talent Development, Routledge.
• Percentile and rarity figures are computed from the normal distribution. The labels, the scale conversion and the standard error of measurement are those described in our own guides to Stanford-Binet 5 scores, WAIS-IV and WAIS-5 scores and WISC-V scores.