Superior intelligence, strong reasoning, roughly top 10% · Rarer than 1 in 24
🏛️ Mensa cutoff 130 — 4 points away
🌍 In the United States (national average ≈ 98, an estimate from test samples), an IQ of 126 is in the top 3.1%.
What an IQ of 126 means. Smarter than 95.8% of people. Classification: Superior — Superior intelligence, strong reasoning, roughly top 10%. Rarer than 1 in 24.
IQ
Classification
Percentile
100
Average
50.0%
120
Superior
90.9%
130
Very Superior / Gifted
97.7%
❓ FAQ
Is an IQ of 126 a good score?
An IQ of 126 falls in the "Superior" range and is higher than 95.8% of the population.
What percentile is an IQ of 126?
An IQ of 126 sits at the 95.8th percentile — the top 4.2% of the population. Roughly 1 in 24 people score this high.
Can you join Mensa with an IQ of 126?
Mensa requires roughly IQ 130 (top 2% on SD15); 126 is 4 points below the cutoff. Practice and a supervised test may close the gap.
How many people have an IQ of 126 or higher?
Roughly 336,297,272 people worldwide — about 4.2% of 8.1 billion.