Nolan Gould's IQ: What the Modern Family Star's Mensa Story Shows

What was reported, and by whom

The number attached to Nolan Gould is 150. Entertainment Tonight put it in print on October 11, 2012, describing the actor as "a member of Mensa in real life, with a reported IQ of 150." Other outlets, HuffPost among them, repeated the figure. None published a test report, named the instrument or dated the testing. The number is a reported score, not a verified one.

In the interviews we reviewed, Gould has not stated a number himself. What he has stated is membership. That distinction matters, and this page keeps it. His career in full is on his genius profile.

The Mensa claim, in his own words

In a November 2010 interview with Smashing Interviews, Gould, then 12, was asked about Mensa. "My brother and me have been members of Mensa since we were about four," he said. He explained that the two had taken a test "for school purposes" and learned they qualified. He also joked about the contrast with his role: "I'm a member of Mensa so sometimes dumb is a hard thing to play."

Mensa admits people who score at or above the 98th percentile on an approved, supervised intelligence test: 130 on a scale with a standard deviation of 15, or 148 on the Cattell scale, which uses 24. Children can qualify through individually administered tests such as the Stanford-Binet or the Wechsler scales for children. Membership therefore tells us something concrete: at the time of testing, Gould scored in the top 2 percent. It does not tell us by how much. Our guide to how to join Mensa sets out the rules.

What a 150 would mean, and why the scale matters

If the 150 comes from a test scored with a standard deviation of 15, it places Gould about 3.3 standard deviations above the mean, higher than roughly 99.96 percent of people: about 1 in 2,300. Our IQ 150 page breaks down that rarity.

If it comes from a test scored on the Cattell scale, the picture changes. A Cattell 150 converts to about 131 on the Wechsler metric, just over the Mensa line. The reports never said which scale produced the number. That single missing detail spans the distance between comfortably gifted and roughly 1 in 2,300. It is why any IQ figure without a named test deserves caution; see how accurate IQ tests really are.

The documented record: acceleration and an 11-season role

Gould was born in New York City on October 28, 1998. By 2012 he had skipped ahead four grades in school, and that summer, at 13, he passed an exam that let him leave high school early. "I took an exam and tested out of high school," he told Ellen DeGeneres that October, adding that he hoped to take online community college courses.

His professional record is fully public. He played Luke Dunphy, the youngest son of Phil and Claire Dunphy, across all 11 seasons of ABC's Modern Family, from 2009 to 2020. The cast won the Screen Actors Guild award for outstanding ensemble in a comedy series four years running, for 2010 through 2013. Sustaining a convincingly dim character for more than a decade, while the audience grows up with him, is a craft of its own.

How Gould compares with other high-scoring names

Gould's case is typical of celebrity IQ figures: a plausible claim, a mainstream outlet repeating it and no public test record behind it. Michael Kearney fits the same pattern at a higher altitude, with an over-200 figure traced to his parents' book. Marilyn vos Savant is the exception: Guinness listed her childhood score, though as a ratio IQ that is not comparable with modern deviation scores.

For actors, the useful comparison is not between claimed numbers but between documented proxies. Gould's proxies are real: early Mensa qualification, which he described himself, and a high school exit exam passed at 13. Those facts are consistent with a high score. They do not pin one down.

What an IQ number cannot tell you about him

A qualifying score earned in early childhood is a snapshot. IQ can shift during childhood, and scores from the preschool years predict adult scores less tightly than scores from adolescence. A qualification at 4 is strong evidence of early ability, not a fixed adult measurement.

IQ also says nothing about comic timing, the skill that carried Gould through 11 seasons of network television. His own line about playing dumb makes the point better than any percentile: portraying a character far from yourself takes control, and control is not what IQ tests measure. For what a high score does and does not predict, see what counts as a high IQ.

How we assessed this

Gould is living, so we apply the rule we use for every living person: no IQ number without attribution. The 150 is attributed to Entertainment Tonight, which itself called it reported. The Mensa membership is attributed to Gould's own 2010 interview; Wikipedia also cites a May 2012 Vanity Fair item on it. We found no published test report, no named instrument and no testing date, and we do not infer them. We make no claims about his private life.

Editorial standard: IQ figures for historical figures are retrospective estimates and are labeled as such; scores for living people appear only when the person disclosed them or a reputable outlet reported them. Corrections: contact the editors.