Quirks of highly intelligent people - First Person POV

[Trick]

There is a difference between high intelligence and high education/knowledge about a specific subject. Not every person with a PhD has an IQ over 135. (In fact, less than half of them do.) Nor does every person with genius-level IQ have an advanced degree. (A few are high school drop-outs.) I was simply asking for clarification as to which you meant.

On the other hand, I'm not qualified to have an opinion on this topic.

135? This whole time I have had the idea the OP was talking about a character with a 150-200 IQ range. A Mensa type...

 

[Weaver]

135? This whole time I have had the idea the OP was talking about a character with a 150-200 IQ range. A Mensa type...

Unless it has changed a lot in the last couple of years, an IQ of 135 (perhaps 132?) qualifies a person to join Mensa. In 1990, 140 was the cut-off. (I remember this because a woman I know was very angry about not quite making it with her mid-130s score.) They go by percentile, though, not the actual number of a score, because tests vary and what falls into the top 2 (?) percent of the population also changes from time to time.

And actually, I picked 135 because, at least a couple of decades ago, the average IQ for a person with a PhD was 130. So, less than half of them have an IQ of 135 or higher. So, having a PhD -- being highly educated -- is not proof of a person highly intelligent. Which was my point.

(According to something I saw online once, it isn't possible for a person to have a 200 IQ, because the percentiles don't allow for it -- not enough people in the world. Seems silly to me. Aren't extreme geniuses something of a statistical anomaly anyway?)

 

[Trick]

When it comes to IQ tests, variation seems to be the rule. This seems like tooting my own horn but it really isn't. I've never gotten below a 136 except on the Mensa test. I am not a genius. I am smart and great at visual and verbal patterns. My friend is a genius and sometimes makes me look like I should be eating paste. He is a Mensa member, according to testing. I guess I just don't think of anything under 150 as a genius.

To be honest, I have no idea what the highest possible IQ score is; I'm willing to bet that there exists more than one scale and definition.