We all know, almost instinctively, what the word ‘genius’ means, and what constitutes a genius mind. The world has given us plenty of bonafide geniuses across the ages and throughout the centuries, from groundbreaking mathematicians, to medical pioneers, to masters of physics, engineering, music, and sport. But what, in IQ test terms, is a genius, and how can one achieve this most lofty of statuses?

IQ Tests and Genius Intellect

It’s important to start off by mentioning that the word ‘genius’ is almost never used in an IQ test result score. Why? Simply because the word in itself is somewhat unreliable – many certified geniuses may not have actually performed particularly well in international IQ tests or other intelligence tests, due to the fact that many of them possessed a type of intelligence or level of insight and skill which is actually extremely difficult to measure.

For example, Beethoven was undoubtedly a genius pianist, and a remarkably talented musician and composer. Does that mean he would necessarily achieve extremely high marks on an IQ test, which measures skill in verbal reasoning, logic, mathematics, and spatial awareness? Maybe, maybe not – we’ll never know for sure. Does that in any way negate his genius stature? Not at all!

IQ Tests and Highly Gifted People

The term preferred by IQ test writers and scientists is ‘highly gifted person’ – which, despite best intentions, is often a misconstrued or misunderstood term in itself. As far as certified IQ tests go, however, a highly gifted person simply refers to someone with a very high IQ, and who scores very highly on IQ tests. Generally speaking, highly gifted people will not only be very good at logic, mathematics, spatial calculations, and verbal reasoning, but they will also be good at finding creative solutions to practical problems.

What makes a high gifted individual? Well, the only way this can be accurately measured is via a certified IQ test, and by analysing their IQ test score. Typically, an IQ test score of 130 or over marks out an individual as highly gifted. While this might be thought of as extremely rare, statistics show that between two to three out of every one hundred people (or 2.5% of the population) would fall comfortably into this category. As such, there is thought to be as many 180,000,000 highly gifted people in the world today… which is considerably more ‘geniuses’ than one might initially suppose!