What Is Joe Biden's IQ?

Joe Biden's IQ is unknown. No score from a professionally administered IQ test has ever been released for the 46th president, and every specific number circulating online, including a viral claim of 187, is fabricated or speculative. What does exist is unusual in one respect: in 1987 Biden released 65 pages of his own academic records, so his documented school history is far better known than his IQ ever will be. This article explains where the fake numbers come from, what those released records actually show, and why no scientific estimate of Biden's IQ has ever been published.

On January 29, 2024, a user on X posted that the White House had announced Biden had taken an aptitude test that found he had an IQ of 187, attributing the announcement to Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. The fact-checking site Snopes investigated and rated the claim False. No such announcement was ever made. The number itself should have been the giveaway: modern IQ tests report scores on a bell curve with a mean of 100 and a "standard deviation" (a measure of how spread out scores are) of 15, and no major test reports much beyond 160, because norm samples run out of people at the extreme.

Other numbers attached to Biden's name, commonly 115 or 128, appear only on celebrity IQ listicles and IQ-test marketing blogs. None cites a test record, a date, or a methodology. In measurement terms these figures are indistinguishable from invention, and they should be treated accordingly.

In September 1987, after a plagiarism story broke during his first presidential campaign, Biden released a 65-page file that he said contained all the records from his years at the Syracuse University College of Law. The file showed that he graduated 76th in a class of 85 in 1968. It also documented a first-year incident in which five pages of a Fordham Law Review article were used in a paper without attribution; he received an F, retook the course, and later earned a grade of 80. His University of Delaware transcript showed mostly C's and D's across his first three semesters, with two A's in physical education, a B in a course on great English writers, and an F in ROTC. At the press conference Biden said, "I was wrong, but I was not malevolent in any way. I did not intentionally move to mislead anybody."

Months earlier, at an April 1987 campaign stop in Claremont, New Hampshire, a voter questioned Biden's academic record. Biden replied, "I'd be delighted to sit down and compare my IQ to yours if you'd like, Frank." He went on to claim a full academic scholarship (the only one in his class, he said), a finish in the top half of his law school class, and three undergraduate degrees. The released records read differently: Newsweek reported a half scholarship based on financial need (Biden said he also received other awards), his class rank was 76th of 85, and his single bachelor's degree carried a double major in history and political science. Biden later corrected the degrees claim himself, and in his memoir he called the moment "a quick and stupid rant that I wished I'd never said," acknowledging that "without realizing it I'd exaggerated my academic record."

One detail matters most for this article: nothing in the released file reports the result of an IQ test or any other cognitive assessment. The 1987 exchange was about grades and scholarships, and no score of any kind has surfaced in the decades since.

The only peer-reviewed estimates of presidential IQs come from a 2006 study by psychologist Dean Keith Simonton, which used "historiometric" methods (statistical reconstruction from biographical records) to estimate scores for the 42 chief executives from George Washington through George W. Bush. Simonton has never updated those estimates to include Barack Obama, Donald Trump, or Biden, so no scholarly figure of any kind exists for the 46th president.

Could anyone estimate it from his record? Only weakly. Standardized test scores such as the SAT correlate strongly with general cognitive ability, which is why documented scores are meaningful proxies. Biden's SAT and LSAT results have never been made public. Grades and class rank are weaker evidence because effort, interest, and course choice also drive them, and completing college and law school supports only a broad inference of at or above average ability. The same evidence problem applies to Donald Trump's IQ and Barack Obama's IQ: no released test score, so no defensible number.

Decades of research show that cognitive ability predicts performance in complex work, and the presidency is certainly complex work. Leadership also draws on knowledge, experience, and interpersonal skill that IQ tests do not measure, which is one reason careful researchers stick to documented records rather than assigning numbers that were never measured. For how scholars have handled earlier officeholders, see our review of US presidents ranked by IQ.

There is no public record of Biden taking a professionally administered IQ test, and no score of any kind has ever been released. Any specific number you see online is speculation or fabrication.

No. Snopes rated this claim False. It began as a January 2024 post on X that falsely attributed the announcement to Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who never said it.

Records Biden himself released in 1987 show he graduated 76th in a class of 85 from the Syracuse University College of Law in 1968. He had earlier claimed a top-half finish, which he later acknowledged was an exaggeration.

At a New Hampshire campaign stop he told a voter, "I'd be delighted to sit down and compare my IQ to yours if you'd like, Frank." He later called the outburst "a quick and stupid rant" and admitted he had exaggerated his academic record.

Archmere Academy in Claymont, Delaware, then the University of Delaware (B.A., 1965, with a double major in history and political science) and the Syracuse University College of Law (J.D., 1968).

Joe Biden's IQ has never been measured in public, and the record he released tells us about his grades rather than his cognitive ability. Treat every specific number attached to his name as folklore. If you want to know where you stand on the scale that testing actually uses, a properly normed assessment such as the Reasoning and Intelligence Online Test reports modern deviation scores with stated precision. You can start with the free IQ test from RIOT IQ.

1. Dionne, E. J., Jr. (1987, September 18). Biden admits plagiarism in school but says it was not "malevolent". The New York Times. nytimes.com

2. Iati, M. (2020, May 7). Ad Watch: Fact-checking a video about Biden's academic record. PolitiFact. politifact.com

3. C-SPAN. (1987). User clip: Biden defends academic credentials in response to New Hampshire voter. c-span.org

4. Liles, J. (2024, January 31). Did White House announce Biden's IQ is 187? Snopes. snopes.com

5. The White House (archived). (2021). President Joe Biden. bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov

6. Simonton, D. K. (2006). Presidential IQ, openness, intellectual brilliance, and leadership: Estimates and correlations for 42 U.S. chief executives. Political Psychology, 27(4), 511-526. doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2006.00524.x

7. Frey, M. C., & Detterman, D. K. (2004). Scholastic assessment or g? The relationship between the Scholastic Assessment Test and general cognitive ability. Psychological Science, 15(6), 373-378. doi.org/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00687.x