Actually, not true. 160+ is extremely rare, extremely gifted and is considered genius level. As mentioned below, statistically, of the 233,000 members of the DIS, only 28 of them would have an IQ of 155 or over.
This is a very important point.
One cannot know their IQ unless they have sat down with a licensed professional, usually a psychologist, and taken a standardized IQ test. There is much that goes into the scoring of a test and that is why one has to be licensed to administer it. The only way to get a valid IQ score is to sit down and take the Stanford-Binet, the WISC, etc.
Even then, the actual test you take or how the person administers it can affect your score. Nurturing, stimulation, parent involvement, even having a hot breakfast can affect scores. Read up on the Milwaukee project for some interesting theories on nurturing youngsters and IQ.
The on-line IQ scores are just games. None of them are even remotely valid.
Even most testing in schools for entry to the gifted programs are not a true IQ score, but only a heads up or a general indicator to the school. A standardized IQ test takes a few hours, so schools do not usually use a standardized test to test for gifted. They usually use a group test which will give an approximate score, but it is not the actual IQ. A friend of mine has an entire practice based on testing kids for gifted classes when they are on the borderline of the group test. It runs about 50/50 on how accurate the initial testing was.
I am always surprised at how many of the DIS posters have been to a psychologist, paid the big bucks for a full IQ test, and know their true IQ scores. The psychology world would be booming if the same percentage of the population in real life would be visiting psychologists to be formally tested.
For fun, here is the normal bell curve of IQ distribution. You can find where you are on the bell curve.
As noted, an IQ of 90 - 109 is considered normal.
Only 2% of the population has an IQ over 130.
Only 0.012% of the population has an IQ of 155 and over.
According to the DIS, today there are 233,780 members. If the DIS was a true representation of the entire population (both sides of the bell curve) and each of those screen names were unique, that would mean that out of 233,780 members only
28 members would have an IQ of 155 or above, 235 members would have a IQ of 145 or better and only 4,700 would have an IQ of 130 and above.
And as a previous poster mentioned - IQ is your potential learning ability. What you do with that IQ is completely up to you. Having a high IQ is not always the smartest person and a guarantee at straight A's and success. A person with a 100 IQ and a higher work ethic, who studies hard will be more knowledgeable and more successful than the 160+ person who never opens a books, never studies and skips class.
In fact, some of the high IQ kids actually do struggle in college. Because they had it so easy in public school, they never learned how to study. So, it is a shock when they start taking upper level classes and they can't slide by like they are used to.
IQ is also based for a good measure on academic knowledge. It does nothing to measure a person's wit, artistic abilities, people skills or even street smarts.
