Warren Buffett's IQ is often listed as 150 or higher, but no verified score exists. See what Buffett actually says about IQ and what his record shows.
Dr. Russell T. WarneChief Scientist
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Warren Buffett has no verified IQ score. The 150 that appears on celebrity-IQ lists is an estimate reverse-engineered from his success, not the result of any test, and Buffett has never published or claimed a number. The only IQ figures reliably connected to him are the ones he uses rhetorically: he has argued for decades that investing "is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with a 130 IQ." This article covers where the 150 comes from, what Buffett actually says about intelligence, and what his verifiable record does and does not show.
Where the "150 IQ" claim comes from
Search for Warren Buffett's IQ and you will find sites listing 150, sometimes 155 or "150+." Follow any of those pages to their source and the trail ends immediately: the most-cited one labels its own headline figure "Estimated," and none of them names a test, a date, or a score report. Buffett, who has been interviewed on the record for six decades, has never released a result.
An estimate built backward from a famous career is not a measurement. A real IQ score comes from a standardized test administered under controlled conditions and compared against "norms," the score distribution of a large representative sample. As intelligence researcher Russell T. Warne documents in his book In the Know, professionally administered IQ tests are reliable and valid instruments; a number inferred from someone's achievements has no test behind it and no error bars around it. The same problem runs through most celebrity IQ claims, as we cover in our article on which celebrities are Mensa members.
What Buffett actually says about IQ
The irony of the 150 claim is that Buffett is on record arguing that IQ beyond a modest threshold is not what makes a great investor. In the book Warren Buffett Speaks, quoted by CNBC, he puts it plainly: "You don't need to be a rocket scientist. Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with a 130 IQ. Rationality is essential." CNBC's summary of his view is that 130 is the score you need to succeed, and that everything past it buys you nothing without temperament.
A 130 happens to sit right at the bar Mensa uses for membership, roughly the top 2 percent of scorers on an accepted standardized test. Buffett's argument is that past that neighborhood, the differentiator is rationality: the discipline to act on your analysis when the market disagrees with you. The only numbers he has ever attached to the subject are 130 and 160, and he uses them to argue the number is not the point.
The verifiable record
Rejected by Harvard after a 10-minute interview
Buffett finished the University of Nebraska in three years and applied to Harvard Business School. As he tells it in HBO's documentary Becoming Warren Buffett, "they interviewed me for about 10 minutes" and turned him down. He later called the rejection "the best thing that ever happened to me."
The letter that opened Columbia
Looking through a Columbia Business School catalog later that summer, Buffett recognized two names: Benjamin Graham, the father of value investing, and David Dodd, whose book Security Analysis he had already read. "I said, 'Dear Professor Dodd. I thought you guys were dead, but now that I found out that you're alive and teaching at Columbia, I would really like to come.' And he admitted me." No admissions test was involved. It could not have been: the Graduate Management Admission Council, the body that created the GMAT, was not founded until 1953, three years after Buffett enrolled in 1950, the year given in published biographies.
Berkshire by the numbers
What is documented, precisely and publicly, is the investing record. Berkshire Hathaway's 2024 shareholder letter reports a compounded annual gain in per-share market value of 19.9 percent from 1965 through 2024, against 10.4 percent for the S&P 500 with dividends. Compounded over six decades, that difference becomes an overall gain of 5,502,284 percent versus 39,054 percent.
That record is extraordinary evidence of judgment, discipline, and ability. It is still not an IQ score, and treating achievement as if it were a test result gets the relationship backward. We look at what cognitive ability does and does not predict about outcomes in our article on whether high IQ correlates with success.
Could Buffett score 150? What that would mean
On a modern test with a mean of 100 and a "standard deviation" of 15, the measure of how spread out scores are, a 150 sits at roughly the 99.96th percentile. Is it plausible that Buffett would score very highly on a real test? Certainly. Is there any documentation that he has? None. And by his own argument, the question matters less than people assume, because past the level where a Mensa card lives, temperament decides who compounds at 19.9 percent. For what a score in that neighborhood actually means, see our guide to whether 145 is a high IQ score.
How real IQ scores get verified
A trustworthy score has a paper trail: a named, standardized test with published norms, administered under controlled conditions, reporting a percentile and a margin of error. Celebrity estimates have none of those things. If you want a real answer for yourself rather than a listicle guess, the Reasoning and Intelligence Online Test from RIOT IQ is a properly normed assessment that reports where you actually stand on the scale the Buffett rumors borrow.
Frequently asked questions
What is Warren Buffett's IQ?
There is no verified IQ score for Warren Buffett. Numbers like 150 circulate on celebrity-IQ sites, but even those sites label them estimates, and Buffett has never released a test result. Any specific figure should be treated as unverified.
What did Warren Buffett say about IQ?
He has repeatedly argued that a very high IQ is not what makes a great investor. He is quoted in Warren Buffett Speaks saying "Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with a 130 IQ. Rationality is essential," and he puts the IQ you need to succeed at about 130.
Is Warren Buffett a genius?
His documented record is extraordinary: Berkshire Hathaway compounded at 19.9 percent a year from 1965 to 2024, roughly double the S&P 500's 10.4 percent. That is strong evidence of exceptional judgment and ability, but it is not an IQ score, and no measured score has ever been published.
Did Warren Buffett get rejected from Harvard?
Yes. After finishing the University of Nebraska in three years, he applied to Harvard Business School and was turned down after a roughly 10-minute interview. He then wrote a mid-August letter to Columbia's David Dodd and was admitted, later calling the rejection "the best thing that ever happened to me."
Did Warren Buffett take the GMAT to get into Columbia?
No. By his own account he was admitted on the strength of a letter to Professor David Dodd. The GMAT could not have been part of his application: the council that created the test was not founded until 1953, three years after Buffett enrolled.
The bottom line
The 150 attached to Warren Buffett is an invention with no test behind it. What is real is a record: three years to a degree, a letter that opened Columbia, and six decades of compounding that doubled the market's rate. Buffett's own verdict on the subject is the best summary available, which is that once you are smart enough, the rest is rationality.
References
1. Elkins, K. (2017, October 12). Here's the IQ score Warren Buffett says is all you need to succeed. CNBC Make It. cnbc.com
2. Willett, M. (2017, January 31). Warren Buffett: Getting rejected by Harvard was the "best thing that ever happened to me." CNBC Make It. cnbc.com
3. Buffett, W. E. (2025, February 22). 2024 shareholder letter. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. berkshirehathaway.com
4. Graduate Management Admission Council. (n.d.). About GMAC.gmac.com
5. American Mensa. (n.d.). Join American Mensa.us.mensa.org
6. Warne, R. T. (2020). In the know: Debunking 35 myths about human intelligence. Cambridge University Press. doi.org
Hero image: Warren Buffett speaking at the 2015 SelectUSA Investment Summit. USA International Trade Administration, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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