What is Gregory House’s IQ?
The show gives a patient an IQ of 178, and never says what Dr. House’s is.
Gregory House’s IQ is never stated in House (Fox, November 16, 2004 to May 21, 2012): none of its 177 episodes gives him a number, and the “160+” that circulates is an unsourced table entry. This site’s estimated IQ for Dr. House, inferred from what the writers show him doing, is 150–170.
Gregory House’s estimated IQ
- Credentials the show states. In “Occam’s Razor” (season 1, episode 3, November 30, 2004) House introduces himself as a board-certified diagnostician with a double specialty in infectious disease and nephrology, and in the pilot (November 16, 2004) the hospital’s Dr. Lisa Cuddy tells a donor who wants him fired that he is still “the best doctor we have.” Wikipedia gives his post as Head of Diagnostic Medicine at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital.
- A school record written to read as exceptional. The series puts him in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where Wikipedia’s summary of “Distractions” (season 2, episode 12, February 14, 2006) has him taking revenge on a doctor who turned him in for cheating, and then at the University of Michigan, where Cuddy says in “Humpty Dumpty” (season 2, episode 3, September 27, 2005) that he “was already a legend.” In “Games” (season 4, episode 9, November 27, 2007) he says he aced his MCATs, and in “Twenty Vicodin” (season 8, episode 1, October 3, 2011) he says he once thought about a PhD in physics.
- A method written as inference. The pilot’s recurring line is “Everybody lies,” and its team scenes are built on a differential diagnosis. In “Twenty Vicodin” he reads a young prison doctor’s family money, politics and Hopkins residency off her shoes, locket and scarf, the kind of small-detail reading that ties him to Sherlock Holmes.
- The show’s people and its commentators rank him at the top. In “Epic Fail” (season 6, episode 3, September 28, 2009) Cuddy tells Foreman that a diagnostic department exists only because of House and that “House was a genius,” and unanswered.io, in a section headed “Ranking on Collider’s List,” puts him second among TV geniuses, behind only the BBC’s Sherlock Holmes and above Sheldon Cooper.
- The writers confine him: his highest degree in canon is a medical degree, his brilliance is one field plus people-reading, and the physics doctorate he mentions is a road not taken. That keeps him a step below the characters whose shows state 187.
No test exists and the show never scores him, so 150–170 is an inference about how the writers rank the character, not a measurement. A diagnostic hit rate is a plot device, not evidence: Wikipedia describes his diagnoses as “rapid and accurate,” and a review of all 177 episodes counted 77 medical errors, so the cases he solves cannot stand in for a score.
- Created by
- David Shore, for House (Fox, November 16, 2004 to May 21, 2012; 8 seasons, 177 episodes)
- Played by
- Hugh Laurie, who won the Golden Globe for best actor in a television drama for the role in 2006 and 2007
- Occupation in the show
- Head of Diagnostic Medicine at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in Princeton, New Jersey
- Specialties, in his words
- Board-certified diagnostician with a double specialty in infectious disease and nephrology (“Occam’s Razor,” season 1, episode 3, November 30, 2004)
- Education, in canon
- Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (the cheating backstory in “Distractions,” February 14, 2006), then the University of Michigan (“Humpty Dumpty,” September 27, 2005)
- Exam score
- Says he aced his MCATs (“Games,” season 4, episode 9, November 27, 2007); no number is given
- Stated IQ
- None for House; the series gives IQ numbers only for patients and colleagues (178 for the patient James Sidas, “Ignorance Is Bliss,” November 23, 2009)
- Modeled on
- Sherlock Holmes, per creator David Shore: apartment 221B, friend Dr. James Wilson, a name that echoes “Holmes”
What an IQ of 150–170 actually means
Set the claim aside for a moment. If someone genuinely scored in this range, here is what that would represent.
Average is 100 by construction, and about two-thirds of people fall between 85 and 115. Take the test to place your own score on this scale.
| Score range | Classification | Share of people | What it indicates |
|---|---|---|---|
| 85 – 114 | Average | ~68% | The range most people fall into. |
| 115 – 129 | Above average | ~13.6% | Roughly one person in seven. |
| 130 – 144 | Gifted | ~2% | The threshold most high-IQ societies use. |
| Above 144 | Highly gifted | ~0.1% | Figures above this range are extrapolated from the curve rather than measured. |
Percentages are approximate and describe a normal distribution. The same number means different things on tests with different standard deviations.
Thirty questions gives you a measured position on this exact scale — your score, your percentile and the ability breakdown behind it.
Find out in 30 minutes →Who Gregory House is
Dr. Gregory House is the lead character of House, the Fox medical drama created by David Shore. It premiered on November 16, 2004 with “Pilot” (also titled “Everybody Lies”), written by Shore and directed by Bryan Singer, and ended on May 21, 2012 with “Everybody Dies,” after eight seasons and 177 episodes. Hugh Laurie plays House. In the story House is Head of Diagnostic Medicine at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in Princeton, New Jersey, where Dr. Lisa Cuddy runs the hospital and House works with a team of doctors on diagnostic cases. He introduces himself as a board-certified diagnostician with a double specialty in infectious disease and nephrology.
The school record is told in pieces. Wikipedia’s character article says House first attended Johns Hopkins University as a physics major and was accepted to its School of Medicine, was expelled, and finished at the University of Michigan Medical School; it cites no episode for the Hopkins undergraduate detail. “Distractions” (season 2, episode 12, February 14, 2006, written by Lawrence Kaplow) is built on House’s revenge against a doctor who turned him in for cheating in medical school, and in “Humpty Dumpty” (September 27, 2005) Cuddy, asked whether she knew House at Michigan, says she was still an undergraduate but he was already a legend. In “Games” (November 27, 2007) he says he aced his MCATs, and in “Twenty Vicodin” (season 8, episode 1, October 3, 2011) he says that before medical school he thought about a PhD in physics researching dark matter.
The method is the show’s signature. In the pilot House says “Everybody lies,” and the team works through a differential diagnosis of the kind used in real clinics. Wikipedia describes him as typically waiting to meet patients and then impressing them with rapid, accurate diagnoses, and says he reads people’s motives and histories from their appearance and behavior. Shore has also pointed, per Wikipedia, to Dr. Joseph Bell, the Edinburgh surgeon who inspired Holmes and who could diagnose people in a waiting room without speaking to them. Whether such skill goes with a high score is a separate question, and the show offers no test.
Against the fictional roster on this site, 150–170 sits a step above Patrick Jane (140–160), whose show gives him no degree and no stated IQ, and below Sherlock Holmes (180–200), Sheldon Cooper (175–195) and Spencer Reid (170–190). The medical detail is also a writers’ choice: in a review reported by AFP on May 30, 2025, Croatian neurologists led by Denis Cerimagic of Dubrovnik University analyzed all 177 episodes and listed 77 errors, while saying the show could still help train medical students. Hugh Laurie appears here only as the actor who plays House; the range rates the character as written.
By Elora Mercer, Celebrity Research WriterFigures checked by Leon Falkner, Data & Research AnalystReviewed by Aarav Vardhan, Editor-in-Chief · Last reviewed October 2026
Gregory House: the documented record
The estimate above rests on this record. Every entry here is a matter of public fact, which is more than can be said for the number itself.
- November 16, 2004House premieres on Fox with “Pilot” (also “Everybody Lies”), written by David Shore and directed by Bryan Singer.
- November 30, 2004In “Occam’s Razor” (season 1, episode 3), House calls himself a board-certified diagnostician with a double specialty in infectious disease and nephrology.
- September 27, 2005In “Humpty Dumpty” (season 2, episode 3), Cuddy says House was already a legend at Michigan.
- February 14, 2006“Distractions” (season 2, episode 12) revisits the Johns Hopkins cheating backstory.
- 2007Hugh Laurie wins his second consecutive Golden Globe for best actor in a television drama for playing House.
- November 27, 2007In “Games” (season 4, episode 9), House says he aced his MCATs.
- September 28, 2009In “Epic Fail” (season 6, episode 3), Cuddy tells Foreman the diagnostic department exists because of House, who “was a genius.”
- November 23, 2009In “Ignorance Is Bliss” (season 6, episode 9), a doctor tells a patient he has an IQ of 178, an IQ number the series gives to someone other than House.
- October 3, 2011In “Twenty Vicodin” (season 8, episode 1), House says he once considered a PhD in physics and reads a prison doctor from her shoes, locket and scarf.
- May 21, 2012The series ends with “Everybody Dies” (season 8, episode 22), the 177th episode.
Where the 160+ figure came from
Following a claim back to its first appearance is the part almost nobody does — and it is what most people are actually asking.
Dr. House’s IQ is a number House never gives, and the figure that circulates, 160+, comes from a list rather than from the show. The page that prints it is a table of fictional geniuses in NeuroLaunch’s article about Hannibal Lecter (NeuroLaunch editorial team, published September 30, 2024), headed “Hannibal Lecter’s Estimated IQ vs. Other Fictional Geniuses,” which puts Dr. Gregory House at “160+” with the trait “Diagnostic reasoning, pattern recognition” and no test, episode or method behind the figure. A Dr. House IQ estimate of that kind is a plausible round number with a floor and no ceiling, the pattern traced in where celebrity IQ numbers come from.
What does the show itself say about Dr. House’s IQ level? No episode states one. Across the transcripts of all 177 episodes, the word “IQ” turns up in only a handful of lines, none rating House. In “Ignorance Is Bliss” (season 6, episode 9, November 23, 2009) a doctor tells a patient, a physicist who graduated from MIT young, “You got an IQ of 178.” In “Half-Wit” (season 3, episode 15, March 6, 2007) a doctor mentions a patient with a 55 IQ. In “Office Politics” (season 7, episode 6, November 8, 2010) one line says House does not care how high a colleague’s IQ is, and another sneers at the “combined IQ north of 300” of two doctors. Every one of those lines is about someone else, so the only numbers the series gives are for patients and colleagues.
Dr. House IQ vs Sherlock Holmes IQ is a comparison the creator invited. David Shore is quoted by Looper (Emily Gilbert, February 17, 2021) saying “I’ve always been a huge Sherlock Holmes fan,” and The Globe and Mail (Andrew Ryan, May 16, 2012) says the idea stemmed in part from his lifelong fascination with Holmes, “hence the pun” in the name. Wikipedia adds the parallels: House’s address is 221B, Holmes’s Baker Street number, and his one true friend is Dr. James Wilson, as Holmes’s is Dr. John Watson. On this site Sherlock Holmes is rated 180–200 on chained inference and recall across many subjects, while House’s documented skill is diagnosis and reading people. Sheldon Cooper and Spencer Reid are rated higher partly because their shows say 187 aloud, and House’s show says nothing.
What would a Dr. House IQ score of 160+ mean if taken at face value? On the usual scale (mean 100, standard deviation 15), 160 is four standard deviations above average, about 1 person in 31,600; the low end of this page’s range, covered in what an IQ of 150 means, is about 1 in 2,300. Those rarity figures come from the normal curve, not from any test. The one exam score the show gives him is not an IQ: he says he aced his MCATs in “Games,” and what the AAMC percentile can and cannot tell you explains why an admissions exam is a different instrument from an IQ test. The “genius” label fans attach to him, covered in what counts as a genius IQ level, describes a type of character more than a result, and a character cannot sit a test at all.
How we read a number →Source of the quoted lines: “Everybody lies” (pilot); the board-certified line (“Occam’s Razor”); “He was already a legend” (“Humpty Dumpty”); the Hopkins cheating exchange (“Distractions”); “when I aced my MCATs” (“Games”); the physics and shoes-locket-scarf lines (“Twenty Vicodin”); “You got an IQ of 178” (“Ignorance Is Bliss”); “House was a genius” (“Epic Fail”); the IQ lines in “Half-Wit” and “Office Politics.” The transcripts carry no speaker labels. No line gives House an IQ.
Created by David Shore; Fox; premiere November 16, 2004; finale May 21, 2012; 8 seasons, 177 episodes; pilot written by Shore, directed by Bryan Singer; episode titles, numbers, air dates and writers; the “Distractions” and “Ignorance Is Bliss” plot summaries. No IQ for House.
Head of Diagnostic Medicine at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital; Hopkins (physics major) and Michigan; the Holmes parallels (221B, Wilson and Watson) and Shore’s Joseph Bell reference; “rapid and accurate” diagnoses; Laurie as the actor. No IQ figure. Wikidata Q842945 is the fictional character, linked to the English Wikipedia article “Gregory House,” with Hugh Laurie as performer and David Shore as creator.
Used for the casting line only: Laurie won best actor in a television series, drama, for House in 2006 and 2007 (nominated 2008 to 2011).
Prints Dr. Gregory House “160+” (House M.D.; “Diagnostic reasoning, pattern recognition”) in a table of fictional geniuses, with no method. Its key takeaways say every number attached to Lecter is fan or expert speculation.
unanswered.io says none of its sources gives House an IQ score and, under a heading on Collider’s list, ranks him second among TV geniuses, ahead of Sheldon Cooper, Spencer Reid and Walter White. TVovermind and Yardbarker rank him among TV’s smartest characters with no number.
Looper quotes Shore (“I’ve always been a huge Sherlock Holmes fan”) and reports the Holmes-Watson, House-Wilson pairing and the 221B number on House’s building. The Globe and Mail says the idea stemmed in part from Shore’s lifelong fascination with Holmes, “hence the pun.” The encyclopedia lists 221B and the Holmes references in episodes.
Croatian neurologists (Denis Cerimagic, Dubrovnik University, with Goran Ivkic and Ervina Bilic) reviewed all 177 episodes and reported 77 errors, while saying the show could still help train medical students.
No IQ for Dr. House appears in the episode transcripts or in Wikipedia’s articles on the character and the series.
The sources behind our estimate
The figures that circulate for Gregory House, what we were able to confirm, and where the two diverge.
A table of fictional geniuses in NeuroLaunch’s article about Hannibal Lecter lists Dr. Gregory House at “160+,” beside Sherlock Holmes at 190, Tony Stark at 170 and Hannibal Lecter at 160–200, with “Diagnostic reasoning, pattern recognition” as his defining trait. People also type “gregory house iq,” “dr house iq level,” “dr house iq score” and “dr house iq estimate.”
No episode states an IQ for Dr. House. The episode transcripts contain a few IQ lines, all about other people: 178 for the patient James Sidas in “Ignorance Is Bliss” (season 6, episode 9, November 23, 2009) and 55 for a patient in “Half-Wit” (season 3, episode 15, March 6, 2007). Wikipedia’s articles on the character and the series carry no IQ either. NeuroLaunch names no test, episode or method for the 160+, and says in the same article that every number attached to Lecter is speculation. unanswered.io (August 4, 2026) says none of its sources gives House an IQ score, and TVovermind (2017) and Yardbarker rank him among TV’s smartest characters without a number.
The circulating 160+ is a floor with no ceiling, and it lands in the middle of this page’s range, so the two agree; agreement is not evidence, because neither rests on a test. On the usual scale (mean 100, standard deviation 15), 150 is roughly 1 person in 2,300, 160 about 1 in 31,600 and 170 about 1 in 650,000 by the normal curve, a wide rarity gap. The range on this page rests on what the show depicts, not on any measured score.
Want a number that does hold up? Every figure on this page is somebody’s claim. Take the 30-question test and get a percentile you can check rather than a figure you have to trust.
Gregory House — frequently asked
What is Gregory House’s IQ?
Gregory House’s IQ is not stated in House: no episode of the Fox series (2004–2012) gives him a number or shows an IQ test. This site’s estimated IQ for Dr. House, inferred from the skill, credentials and reputation the writers give him, is 150–170. The 160+ that circulates online is an unsourced fan estimate.
What is Dr. House’s IQ level, and where does 160+ come from?
The 160+ appears in a table of fictional geniuses in NeuroLaunch’s article about Hannibal Lecter, beside Sherlock Holmes at 190, with no test or method named. No Dr. House IQ score comes from the show. On the usual scale, 160 is about 1 person in 31,600.
Does House ever state Dr. House’s IQ score or show him taking an IQ test?
No. IQ numbers are spoken only about other people: 178 for the patient James Sidas in “Ignorance Is Bliss” (November 23, 2009) and 55 for a patient in “Half-Wit” (March 6, 2007). For House himself, the show says only that he is board-certified and aced his MCATs.
Is Dr. House a genius, and what does a TV “medical genius” not mean?
The show frames him as one: in “Epic Fail” (September 28, 2009) Cuddy says “House was a genius.” But a medical genius in a drama is not a test result. A diagnostic hit rate is a writers’ device, and a review of all 177 episodes counted 77 medical errors. Exams such as the MCAT measure medical knowledge, not IQ.
Dr. House IQ vs Sherlock Holmes IQ: who is higher?
On this site Sherlock Holmes is estimated at 180–200 and Dr. House at 150–170, so Holmes ranks higher; both are character estimates, not scores. Creator David Shore has called himself a huge Holmes fan, and House’s apartment number, 221B, and his friend Wilson echo Holmes and Watson.
How does Dr. House’s estimated IQ compare with Patrick Jane, Sheldon Cooper and Spencer Reid?
Dr. House’s 150–170 sits a step above Patrick Jane’s 140–160 and below Sheldon Cooper’s 175–195 and Spencer Reid’s 170–190. Cooper’s and Reid’s shows each state 187 aloud; House’s states none, so his range rests on credentials and method: a medical degree and two specialties, against Jane’s backstory of never attending high school.
Where did Gregory House go to school, and what does that say about his IQ?
The series places him at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, with a cheating backstory told in “Distractions” (2006), and at the University of Michigan (“Humpty Dumpty,” 2005). He says he aced his MCATs (“Games,” 2007). Credentials like these show high achievement, but no school record is an IQ score; this estimate is character analysis, not a test.
Does Dr. House have a medical degree, and what are his specialties in the show?
Yes. In “Occam’s Razor” (November 30, 2004) House calls himself a board-certified diagnostician with a double specialty in infectious disease and nephrology, and he heads Diagnostic Medicine at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. The series places his medical training at Johns Hopkins and the University of Michigan.
How does my IQ compare with Gregory House?
You can find out in about fifteen minutes. The IQ Metrics assessment is 30 questions, scored on the same 100-mean scale used throughout this page, so your result and the estimate above are at least expressed in the same units — one measured, one inferred. Once you have a number, the leaderboard shows where it would sit, and how we score and norm it explains the benchmarking.
Where does this estimate come from?
From the documented record rather than a test — the method is named above and set out in full under how we read a number. Compare it against the other fictional profiles, starting with Sherlock Holmes.
- Take the 30-question IQ test — get a measured score and percentile of your own
- Average IQ by country — how the scale behaves across populations
- How IQ Metrics scores its assessment — the method behind our own number
- More on how IQ testing works — reliability, error and what a score can and cannot say
- More fictional profiles — same field, same method
More fictional
Photograph of actor Simon Baker by Martin Kraft (Berlinale, February 23, 2020), CC BY-SA 4.0. Patrick Jane is a character created by Bruno Heller for The Mentalist, played by Baker from 2008 to 2015; this is a photograph of the actor who played the role, not of the character. Cropped and with background removed for the portrait above. · Illustration by Sidney Paget (1890s), public domain. · Photograph of actor Jim Parsons by Philip Romano (Broadway opening night of Good Night, and Good Luck, April 3, 2025), CC BY 4.0. Sheldon Cooper is a character created by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady for The Big Bang Theory, played by Parsons from 2007 to 2019; this is a photograph of the actor who played the role, not of the character. Background removed for the portrait above.
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