What is Emma Watson’s IQ?
J. K. Rowling has called Hermione Granger a “borderline genius”. The actress has a Brown degree, an Oxford year and a 138 that no page we found traces to a test.
No published IQ test result exists for Emma Watson. The 138 that circulates comes from celebrity-IQ pages that name no test, date or examiner; what is documented is a Brown University degree in English literature (2014), a year as a visiting student at Worcester College, Oxford, and reported straight As at A level, which support an estimated IQ of about 125–140.
Emma Watson’s estimated IQ
- Bachelor’s degree in English literature from Brown University, which she entered in 2009 and completed at the commencement of May 25, 2014, as the Associated Press reported and the Dragon School’s alumni page confirms. No honors designation appears in any source we opened.
- A year (2011–12) as a visiting student at Worcester College, Oxford, while still enrolled at Brown. Cherwell reported in July 2011 that Worcester takes about 15 visiting students a year and cited an unnamed inside source saying admission rested on academic achievement, not fame.
- Straight As at A level in 2008 in English literature, geography and art (A was the top grade until the A* arrived in 2010), and eight A* and two A at GCSE in 2006. Both are widely reported, and neither could be traced to a primary source we were able to open.
- Graduate study at Oxford: the Dragon School’s alumni page says she began a Master’s in creative writing in 2023 and later switched to a DPhil in literature. We found no report of a completed Oxford degree, so this shows continuing academic work rather than a finished record.
Every input is an achievement record, not a test: grades and degrees reflect schooling, tutoring and effort as well as reasoning, and Watson was tutored on set for up to five hours a day while filming. The Brown degree carries no honors we could find, the exam results rest on press reports and the Oxford doctorate is unfinished, so the range is deliberately loose.
- Born
- April 15, 1990, Paris, France; raised in Oxfordshire, England
- Schools
- Dragon School (until 2003); Headington School, Oxford
- Degree
- Brown University, bachelor’s degree in English literature, May 25, 2014
- Oxford
- Visiting student, Worcester College, 2011–12; Master’s in creative writing (2023), later a DPhil in literature, per the Dragon School
- Known for
- Hermione Granger in eight Harry Potter films (2001–2011); Beauty and the Beast (2017); Little Women (2019)
- Advocacy
- UN Women Goodwill Ambassador (announced July 2014); HeForShe speech, September 20, 2014
- Circulating figure
- 138, unsourced
- Documented IQ test
- None published
What an IQ of 125–140 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 Emma Watson is
Emma Watson was born on April 15, 1990 in Paris, lived in Maisons-Laffitte until she was five and then moved to Oxfordshire in England. She attended the Dragon School in Oxford until 2003, trained at the Oxford branch of Stagecoach Theatre Arts, and went on to Headington School, an independent day and boarding school for girls aged 11 to 18. The Dragon School’s alumni page says her first audition for the Harry Potter films took place in its gymnasium; Wikipedia says she was nine and auditioned eight times in all. She played Hermione Granger in all eight films, from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001) to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011), and was tutored on set for up to five hours a day.
Her school results were reported at the time and are still repeated by fan sites and tabloids. Her GCSEs in 2006 were reported as eight A* and two A across ten subjects, and her A levels in 2008 as straight As in English literature, geography and art; The Telegraph ran the second result on August 14, 2008, as Wikipedia’s citation shows, though we could not open that article. The Riot IQ article calls these reports plausible but unconfirmed by any primary source, and we could not confirm them either, so they appear here as reported, not established. A was the top A-level grade in 2008, because the A* was first awarded in 2010, and exam grades measure achievement, which is not the same thing as an IQ score (see achievement tests and IQ tests).
She entered Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, in 2009 and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English literature on May 25, 2014, one of about 2,000 graduates, the Associated Press reported. The AP noted that she released both Deathly Hallows films, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, This Is the End and Noah while a student. In July 2011 NewsCore quoted her saying she was still a Brown student and would spend her third year abroad at Oxford; Cherwell, the Oxford student newspaper, reported that she would attend Worcester College as a visiting student, one of about 15 the college takes each year, and planned to return to Brown for her final year; Wikipedia dates the year at Worcester to 2011–12. In February 2016 she and Benedict Cumberbatch, who studied drama at Manchester and acting at LAMDA rather than at Oxford, were both named visiting fellows of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.
The Dragon School’s alumni page adds that she began a Master’s in creative writing at Oxford in 2023 and later switched to a DPhil in literature; it reports no completed Oxford degree, so this profile treats the doctorate as work in progress. Outside acting, UN Women announced her as a Goodwill Ambassador in July 2014, weeks after her Brown commencement, and on September 20, 2014 she spoke at the launch of the HeForShe campaign at United Nations Headquarters in New York, an appeal to men and boys to act for gender equality. Later screen work includes Beauty and the Beast (2017) and Little Women (2019). A bookish role, an Ivy League degree and study at Oxford make a tidy story, and a tidy story is what an unsourced number needs in order to sound plausible; for what typical scores at selective universities imply, see our piece on the average IQ of MIT, Oxford and Yale students.
By Elora Mercer, Celebrity Research WriterFigures checked by Leon Falkner, Data & Research AnalystReviewed by Aarav Vardhan, Editor-in-Chief · Last reviewed August 2026
Emma Watson: 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.
- 1990Born in Paris on April 15.
- 2001Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone opens; she plays Hermione Granger in all eight films, the last of which follows in 2011.
- 2006Sits her GCSE exams; results are reported as eight A* and two A across ten subjects.
- 2008A-level results are reported as straight As in English literature, geography and art (The Telegraph, August 14).
- 2009Enters Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
- 2011Begins the 2011–12 academic year as a visiting student at Worcester College, Oxford, while still enrolled at Brown.
- 2014Graduates from Brown on May 25 with a bachelor’s degree in English literature.
- 2014UN Women announces her as a Goodwill Ambassador in July; she speaks at the HeForShe launch at United Nations Headquarters on September 20.
- 2016Named a visiting fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, in February, alongside Benedict Cumberbatch.
- 2023Begins graduate study at Oxford: a Master’s in creative writing that later becomes a DPhil in literature, per the Dragon School.
Where the 138 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.
What is the IQ of Emma Watson? The pages that answer say 138, and the trail behind it runs out quickly. The earliest dated page we opened is iqtestprep.com, from May 30, 2022, which says it is estimated that she has an IQ of 138 and names no test. TheThings, updated on April 7, 2024, says she reportedly has it and links that sentence to a celebanswers.com page titled “What Is Emma Watson’s IQ?”; that page returned a not-found error when we tried to open it, so what it cites, if anything, is unknown. Every other page we opened that carries the number gives no first source either (see where celebrity IQ numbers come from). We found no Emma Watson IQ test result published by her, a testing body or a psychologist.
The other pages repeat the figure under labels of their own. iqtestprep.com files it under “Gifted or very advanced”, sociosite.net under “High intelligence” (adding that it corresponds to 0.561 percent of the population), The Genius Index under “Very Superior” and TheThings under “moderately gifted”, which shows the labels belong to each site and not to a test report (see how IQ classifications differ). The pages also copy each other’s slips. iqtests.com says she took her English literature degree at Oxford, when the degree is from Brown, and The Genius Index places her GCSEs and A levels at “her school, Dragon”, although the Dragon School teaches only to age 13. An August 17, 2026 Riot IQ article by Dr. Russell T. Warne reached the same verdict: no test, no date and no examiner stand behind the 138.
The Emma Watson IQ figure also gets tangled with her best-known role. J. K. Rowling has called Hermione Granger a “borderline genius”, and the character is described as an exceptionally talented witch, but that describes fiction. TheThings speculates that Hermione would have scored above 145 while admitting nobody can know, sociosite.net says Hermione is only slightly smarter than the actress, and FilmFolly, which lists Watson under an “IQ 132–138” heading, argues that a top exam result proves nobody else could have played the Hogwarts bookworm. Each slides from a casting decision to a claim about cognition. Playing a brilliant student is not evidence of being one, and a character has no IQ to rank her against: the comparison works only by inventing a number for the character too.
On a 15-point scale a 138 is 2.5 standard deviations above the average of 100, roughly the top 0.6 percent or one person in 177 (see how rare a high IQ score is). Any Emma Watson IQ level has to be inferred from the record, and our range of 125–140 for her estimated IQ puts the 138 just inside its top edge: unlike the 160s and 180s that circulate for other actors, it is not out of reach of the documented facts, only unsupported. The middle of the range, about 132, sits a few points below it, so the error runs in the usual direction, only by far less than for most actors here. Among the other actors, the record places her level with Lisa Kudrow and Benedict Cumberbatch (both 125–140), below Natalie Portman (135–145, a Harvard degree and two peer-reviewed papers) and Jodie Foster (130–145, Yale, magna cum laude), and well below Mayim Bialik (140–155, a completed UCLA doctorate).
How we read a number →The school’s own profile. It says her first Harry Potter audition took place in the school’s gymnasium, that she graduated from Brown University with a degree in English literature in May 2014, and that she started a Master’s in creative writing in 2023 and later switched to a DPhil in literature. It says nothing about IQ.
Confirm her title as UN Women Goodwill Ambassador and the HeForShe launch at United Nations Headquarters in New York on September 20, 2014. Neither page mentions IQ.
Report her bachelor’s degree in English literature at Brown’s commencement, that she started there in 2009 and was among about 2,000 graduates, and the films she released while a student. None mentions honors or Oxford.
Cherwell reports a visiting-student place at Worcester College for her third year, notes that Brown requires only four semesters in residence and that Worcester takes about 15 visiting students a year, and cites an unnamed inside source saying admission rested on academic achievement, not fame; a college representative declined to comment on her course. NewsCore quotes Watson saying she remains a Brown student and will spend her third year at Oxford.
Reports that she shared her A-level result: straight As in 2008 in English literature, geography and art. The copy we read is undated. The Telegraph article of August 14, 2008 that Wikipedia cites for the same result could not be opened.
Second-hand. British Heritage gives eight A* and two A across ten GCSE subjects taken in June 2006, and the August 24, 2006 repost of a BBC Newsround item gives the same grades; British Heritage also gives an A in each of English, geography and art at A level. Study International says she “scored 10 As”, which does not match. The BBC Newsround page behind the repost could not be opened, so treat the grades as widely reported, not confirmed.
Orientation and cross-checks: birth date and place, schools, the eight-film list, the 2011–12 Worcester year, the 2016 Lady Margaret Hall fellowship, the A* first awarded in 2010, Rowling’s “borderline genius” description of Hermione, and the education of the actors compared here. Wikidata confirms Q39476 is the actress Emma Watson, born April 15, 1990 in Paris, with no date of death recorded.
A separate page that also finds no test, date or examiner behind the 138, says there is no credible record of Mensa membership, and describes the GCSE and A-level reports as plausible but unconfirmed by a primary source. It dates her UN Women appointment to July 2014.
The pages that state a figure: 138 on the first five and an “IQ 132–138” heading covering a group on FilmFolly. None names a test, date or examiner. iqtestprep.com and iqtests.com add disclaimers, TheThings links its figure to a celebanswers.com page that returns a not-found error, and sociosite.net, TheThings and FilmFolly bring in Hermione Granger.
None from Watson, a testing body or a psychologist. Looked for on the pages above, the Dragon School and UN Women pages, Wikipedia and the Associated Press graduation reports; none contains a score. Reddit and Quora pages could not be opened.
The sources behind our estimate
The figures that circulate for Emma Watson, what we were able to confirm, and where the two diverge.
Ask what the IQ of Emma Watson is and the pages that answer give 138, usually as an estimate or a “reported” figure. It appears on iqtestprep.com (dated May 30, 2022), TheThings (updated April 7, 2024), iqtests.com (April 18, 2024), sociosite.net and The Genius Index, and FilmFolly (April 4, 2024) lists her under an “IQ 132–138” heading. Several set the number beside her role as Hermione Granger.
No Emma Watson IQ test result has been published, and none of the pages we opened that carry the number names a test, a date or an examiner. iqtestprep.com says it is “estimated” that she has it and adds that its site and tests are for entertainment purposes only. iqtests.com heads its article “IQ Level: 138”, then says any numbers in circulation are guesses without solid proof. TheThings says she “reportedly” has it and links that sentence to a celebanswers.com page that returns a not-found error. The Genius Index calls its figure an “Estimated Cognitive Quotient”, and FilmFolly’s 132–138 heading covers a group of stars rather than her alone. What can be checked is the record: the Associated Press reported her Brown degree on May 25, 2014, and the Dragon School’s alumni page confirms it.
Unlike the 160s and 180s that circulate for several other actors in this section, the 138 sits inside the range her record supports, close to the top. That does not make it sourced: it is a number that fits a plausible biography and has been repeated from page to page, and a good fit is not a measurement.
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.
Emma Watson — frequently asked
What is Emma Watson’s IQ?
No published IQ test result exists for Emma Watson, so there is no measured score. The 138 that circulates comes from celebrity-IQ pages that name no test, date or examiner. Our estimate of 125–140 is inferred from her Brown degree, her reported exam results and her study at Oxford, not from a test.
Is Emma Watson’s IQ 138?
There is no evidence that it is. The Emma Watson IQ score of 138 appears on iqtestprep.com, TheThings, iqtests.com and other pages, but none names a test, and some call it an estimate or a guess. A 138 would sit about 2.5 standard deviations above average, roughly one person in 177.
Did Emma Watson take an IQ test?
There is no public record that she did. No Emma Watson IQ test has been published by her, a testing body or a psychologist, and none of the pages quoting 138 names one. Her documented record is a Brown degree in English literature, reported straight As at A level and study at Oxford.
Is there an Emma Watson IQ Reddit thread with a real score?
A forum thread can repeat a number, but only a named test, a date and an examiner can supply a score. A Quora question in search results builds on the 138, and we could not open Reddit pages. Nothing we could read ties Emma Watson to a test.
Is Emma Watson a genius?
There is no evidence for that label. Her record (a Brown degree, a visiting year at Worcester College, Oxford, and later Oxford graduate study) points to a high range but not an extreme one. Hermione Granger, whom J. K. Rowling has called a “borderline genius”, is fiction and says nothing about Watson herself.
Is Emma Watson as smart as Hermione Granger?
The two cannot be ranked by IQ. Hermione is a fictional character described as exceptionally talented, while Watson is a real person with a documented academic record. Pages that say Hermione is slightly smarter, or would score above 145, are comparing a character with an estimate, and neither has a test score.
What are Emma Watson’s qualifications?
Watson holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Brown University, awarded on May 25, 2014, and spent 2011–12 as a visiting student at Worcester College, Oxford. Her reported school results are eight A* and two A at GCSE and straight As at A level. She has since begun Oxford graduate study; we found no report of a completed Oxford degree.
How does Emma Watson’s estimated IQ compare with Natalie Portman’s?
IQ Metrics places Watson’s estimated IQ range of 125–140 below Natalie Portman’s 135–145. Portman holds a Harvard psychology degree from 2003 and co-authored peer-reviewed papers, a stronger checkable record than Watson’s Brown degree and reported exam results. Neither range comes from an IQ test.
How does my IQ compare with Emma Watson?
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 actors profiles, starting with Natalie Portman.
- 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 actors profiles — same field, same method
More actors
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