A Follow-up of Subjects Scoring above 180 IQ in Terman's “Genetic Studies of Genius”

Abstract

Although there are numerous studies of gifted students, there have been no studies following up the very high IQ students into adulthood. Using the Terman files, 26 subjects with scores above 180 IQ were compared with 26 randomly selected subjects from Terman's sample. Findings were generally that the extra IQ points made little difference and that extremely high IQ does not seem to indicate “genius” in the commonly understood sense of the word.