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The Website Awesomejelly.com provides the IQ estimates for thirty of the U.S. presidents (see below). They give only “Awesome Jelly” as the source.This kind of estimating IQs of people from the past has been done before. Awesome Jelly does not explain it, but I know that it is done by studying the individual’s biography, paying attention to his or her early education and what he or she accomplished at what age. Then averaging the IQs of children (who have taken IQ tests) who have made comparable intellectual achievements at the same age as the historical target. Then the researcher takes into consideration what the historical person accomplished in later life. (Often, this is used to downgrade the person’s IQ – not fair IMO – but, in this case, all of these people became president of the United States, so that is quite an accomplishment.)Caveats: I do not know whether these are valid estimates, and I have to wonder why they (whoever they are) left out fifteen presidents.So, before I comment on Awesome Jelly’s conclusions about the thirty they chose, I would like to mention just three of the most glaring omissions they made:First, James Madison. His IQ was undoubtedly north of 160, possibly north of 170. He mastered Latin before he was 16 and mastered Greek in college. For his post graduate study (no degree) he studied philosophy and Hebrew. He read Latin and Greek for his own edification for the rest of his life. He was highly detail-oriented and came to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 with an outline for a constitution under his arm. Since nobody else had had such foresight, his plan became the working outline for the eventual document that was hammered out.Second, James Garfield. His IQ must have been north of 150, at least. Although he was reading at age three, Garfield was held back by his family’s poverty. He worked his way through school and started at the college level when he was already 20. He made up for lost time, though. After bachelor studies and an M.A., he taught college level courses and became the school’s principal. (Most sources will tell you he was a college president, but biographer Woodrow Wasson says his school was not accredited until after he served as its chief administrator; so, the title he actually held was “principal.”) The courses he taught included English, Latin, Greek and German. Later he became a member of the board of trustees of his alma mater. Not satisfied to just sit on the board, he took an active part in designing the curriculum.Garfield also served as a state senator and then a U.S. congressman, elected to the latter office during the Civil War, while he was still in uniform with the rank of major general. He had BTW already passed the Ohio bar in 1860. Garfield’s first and only case was pled before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1867. (An amicus brief, I believe.) His side won the case.Garfield’s career has much in common with a Ginsu Knife infomercial: There’s more! Garfield belonged to an obscure Protestant sect in which there was no formal training for the clergy; consequently, any member of the sect could give sermons, and if someone gave a lot of sermons and was well-received, they were essentially regarded as clergy. Garfield gave a lot of sermons, and he became popular with many congregations, although he may or may not have ever had a flock of his own. (If so, it was brief.) The tragic ending is that Garfield was president for just a few months before he died from an assassin’s bullet. No one knows whether all that promise would have led to a great or a disappointing presidency.Third, Herbert Hoover. He was an average student who only excelled in mathematics and did so poorly in other subjects that when he was admitted to Stanford, it was on a probationary basis because of his poor aptitude in English, even though he did get some enjoyment from reading literature. He became a geology major and studied engineering, graduating at 21 with an A.B. in geology. While still an undergraduate, he had worked on government geological surveys of Arkansas, California and Nevada.Now here are Awesome’s choices and my comments:John Quincy Adams 175. There is no doubt that he was brilliant. He was a Harvard graduate who spoke several languages fluently. He was a lawyer, an eloquent orator, and a skilled diplomat. In his first official diplomatic posting he was the interpreter to Francis Dana, the U.S. Ambassador to Russia. Adams was barely 15 at the time. (This was based on his knowledge of French, not Russian; all of the Russian officials, including the tsar himself, were fluent in French.)Thomas Jefferson 160. That low? I think everyone can accept, without further ado, that Jefferson, the multi-lingual lawyer, architect, and statesman who wrote the Declaration of Independence, was at least this smart. He studied Latin, Greek, and French from the age of nine and mastered the classics in his teens. When he was admitted to the bar at 24, after five years of concentrated legal study, he automatically became one of the most knowledgeable lawyers in the colonies.John F. Kennedy 160. He must have actually taken the Stanford-Binet IQ test when he was a boy because the headmaster of his private high school wrote, “Jack is not as able academically as his high IQ might lead us to think.” He was also tested for aptitudes by the Johnson O’Connor Human Engineering Laboratory in Boston. He was a late bloomer, coming into his own during the last two years of college when he wrote a term paper that was later turned into the book “Why England Slept.” He excelled in multiple sports, worked at the student newspaper, and also joined clubs. He graduated cum laud. If he and Jefferson truly had comparable IQs, I am reminded of the time JFK hosted a dinner in honor of Nobel Prize winners, and he quipped that it was the greatest gathering of brilliant minds at the White House since Thomas Jefferson dined alone. According to Awesome Jelly, JFK alone was a sufficient match for Jefferson.Bill Clinton 159. His grandparents taught him to read and count at three. He did well in school, winning awards and graduating fourth in his high school class. By age ten he was interested enough in politics to watch gavel-to-gavel convention coverage of both the major parties on television. After seeing JFK speak in Washington, DC in 1963, he decided to become a politician and afterward ran for and won offices such as high school student council member. He also seriously studied the saxophone and formed a trio with friends. Clinton continued running for office in student government at the college level. He was recognized as a bright student and earned a Rhodes Scholarship and then a scholarship to Yale Law School.Jimmy Carter 156. He was a good student who loved to read history and literature. He was active in sports, particularly basketball. Later in his education, he also studied dance and public speaking for a time. In his higher education, he transferred from school to school before landing at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. There he excelled in electronics among other courses and launched a career in the navy which he thought would be his career. He graduated fifty-ninth out of 820 classmates. He later taught electronics and went to submarine school where he graduated third in a class of 52. The navy sent him back to college to study nuclear physics and then assigned him as engineering officer on a nuclear submarine. With the death of his father, he resigned from the navy and took over the family farm, which he improved by applying scientific techniques. He became involved in local politics, which led step-by-step to a long political career. After being renewed in his faith in his forties, he read the entire Bible from cover to cover several times, not only in English but in Spanish.Barrack Obama 155. He went to pre-school in Hawaii before moving with his mother and her second husband to Indonesia. There, from ages six to 10, he was mostly being taught in the Indonesian language, but he was being systematically home-schooled in English. (Much ink has been spilled about how much Indonesian he ever acquired or later retained. It is not unusual for children to forget a first language, let alone a second one, when they have spent most of their late childhood and all of their adulthood in a different language community.) Moving back to Hawaii and eventually to the mainland of the U.S., Obama continued his education in private schools. There he may or may not have been an indifferent student who associated with slackers during his high school years. He acquired a mentor during his teens, when his grandfather introduced him to Frank Marshall Davis, a former Chicago journalist who had a profound if not final influence on Obama’s political philosophy (and possibly on the future president’s choice of Chicago as a second hometown). Beginning when he was 18, he attended two colleges on the mainland, graduating at 21 with a degree in political science. (He had made his first public political speech when he was 20.) He then worked for several non-profit groups involved either in research or community activism. Much later, he did a summer internship at a law firm. At 29 he graduated from Harvard Law School, apparently either in the top 15 or 10 percent of his class. He had also been a member of the school’s law review, serving consecutively as its editor and president.Franklin D. Roosevelt 150. He was brought up in luxury with private tutors and private schools. He learned to speak French and German while living in Europe with his parents. (This is almost not remarkable because young children are apt to learn any language to which they are exposed for a period of time.) A B and C student, he was well-liked by his teachers and he won a Latin prize. He was involved in football and boxing and managed the baseball team. In college, he was active in clubs, sports, student government, and the school newspaper. He attended law school but passed the bar before graduation. (It was not until the 1920s that more of those who passed the bar were law school graduates rather than those who were still in school or had never formally studied law.)Millard Fillmore 149. He was apprenticed to clothmakers at an early age because of his family’s poverty. He learned to read and write but only read the Bible for many years. He then discovered the library and began to educate himself, learning a new word from the dictionary every day. At 19, he began attending an academy where his female teacher was only a year older than himself. He became her favorite student because of his eagerness to learn. He then became a teacher himself before apprenticing himself to a lawyer. He eventually passed the bar and went into practice. Those who worked for him as law clerks said that he would sometimes hold classes and that he was very good at teaching the law.Andrew Jackson 145. His mother wanted him to become a minister and saw that he got a basic education. He was able to read well by age nine, but he never liked school and his spelling and grammar were always poor. However, he took full advantage of the system of legal apprenticeship and became a lawyer at 20 and later became a county prosecutor. His military career began when he was 13, during the American Revolution. He saw some action but his most lasting memory was of being a prisoner of war for two weeks in 1781. Because of the war, Jackson lost his immediate family and was orphaned at 14. He later served in state militias and rose to the rank of major general.Donald Trump 145. He was apparently an “unexceptional student” but excelled in sports, especially golf and football. Because he was unruly, his parents sent him to military school during high school. There he did well in sports and became a cadet captain. He worked for his family’s business while attending two colleges, the second of which is regarded as one of the best business schools in the U.S. and from which he earned a B.S. in economics.Grover Cleveland 144. He was the son of a minister who died when the future president was 16. Cleveland later described his religious upbringing as a “strengthening influence.” Home schooled to the age of 11, he attended two schools thereafter, where he was hard-working but not considered all that bright; however, he founded a debating society in high school. He worked odd jobs throughout his teens. Then he had to quit school and go to work when his father died. His older brother got him a job teaching the blind. He only did this for one year. After turning down a private scholarship that was contingent on his entering the ministry, he went to work for an uncle who was a stock breeder. The job involved editing a breeder’s handbook, and his uncle also got him a job as a law clerk, paving Cleveland’s way toward becoming a lawyer, which he did at age 22.Theodore Roosevelt 143. He developed an early interest in zoology, was a prolific taxidermist, and even wrote a learned paper on insects when he was nine. His wealthy parents took him to Europe where a tutor taught him German and French. In college, he excelled in sciences, German and philosophy but did poorly in Latin and Greek. He belonged to many academic clubs and excelled in boxing. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa, magnum cum laud, and was twenty-first in a class of 177. He started law school but lost interest, never becoming a lawyer. Although well versed in the Bible, he was fired from teaching Sunday school at an Episcopal church when he was about 20, after the rector found out that he belonged to the Dutch Reformed denomination.George H.W. Bush 143. Raised in luxury, he went to the “best” schools where he was academically a late bloomer, although he was very popular, joined clubs, and played several sports, becoming exceptionally skilled at baseball. His education was interrupted, however, by World War II. He joined the navy on his eighteenth birthday and rose from the bottom of the enlisted ranks to lieutenant, and became a naval aviator, at 19, the youngest in service at the time. At 20, he earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for completing a combat mission that nearly cost his life. In college he bloomed, especially in his last two years, graduating with honors.Abraham Lincoln 140. He lived on the frontier where, as he once said, anyone who knew a word or two in Latin was considered to be a wizard. One-room schoolhouses provided education limited to the basics, and only when there was a teacher available, which was infrequently. Nevertheless, Lincoln was a voracious reader, and educated himself beyond most of his peers. (Once, he spent a summer doing physical labor while memorizing Euclid’s geometry – not doing one by day and the other by night, but simultaneously.) Lincoln was self-taught in both surveying and the law. He passed his state’s bar by age 27 and became a successful attorney.Lyndon B. Johnson 140. He learned to read by four but hated school and had a checkered academic career. He was a member of an award-winning debate team as a senior in high school. After high school, he traveled on the cheap and worked at manual labor. Returning to education, he attended teachers’ college, where he did well in history and political science but poorly in math and science. He was again on the debate team and was active in student politics. At 20, he managed someone else’s winning campaign for a state senate seat, at the same time that Johnson worked as a student teacher. He graduated at 22 and worked as a high school teacher, focusing on debate and public speaking. He later studied law for a year.George Washington 140. Surprisingly little is known about his education. His father, who died when the boy was 11, had sent his older children to school in England, but George remained in Virginia. Skilled in math, he became a professional surveyor at 17. At 20, he inherited his brother’s estate and successfully ran it for the rest of his life. At that same age, he began serving in the Virginia militia, launching another life-long career.Gerald Ford 140. He worked his way through school, graduating near the top of his high school class and in the top quarter in college (on a partial scholarship). His best subjects were math, science, history and political science while Latin was his worst. He excelled in sports in both secondary and higher education, and he worked as an assistant college football coach before attending a top law school from which he graduated at 27.George W. Bush 139. Attending private schools and an Ivy League University, he was an average student by his own description. He engaged in sports and joined clubs. Rejected by law school, he attended business school instead and earned an MBA, making him the only presidents to earn this degree. He was popular and was elected president of his fraternity. (He had a talent for remembering the names of people after meeting them only once, even in a large group.)James Monroe 139. He did well in Latin and math and was admitted to college at age 16. When the American Revolution began while he was pursuing higher education, Monroe dropped out and joined the Continental Army. From ages 18 to 19, he rose from lieutenant to major. He was later made a lieutenant colonel. At the end of the war, he studied law under the personal tutelage of Thomas Jefferson.Dwight Eisenhower 132. He grew up exceptionally poor, always having to work, and was not an exceptional student, although his favorite high school subjects were history and math. He played football both in high school and college. College was the U.S. Military Academy where he excelled in engineering and some other classes, but graduated sixty-first in a class of 164. His military career might have gone nowhere but for a general who took an interest and pushed him to attend the Staff and War colleges. At the former, he graduated first in his class.Richard Nixon 132. As a boy he had to help out in the family business, but he managed to be a diligent student. He made his mark as an excellent high school debater and public speaker, representing the West Coast in a national contest. He graduated from high school first in his class. Active in clubs in college (including captain of the debate team and member of the second string in football), he graduated second in his class. He was president of the student body in college and president of his graduating class in law school, which he attended on an academic scholarship. He graduated third in his class at law school at 24.William McKinley 130. He was president of his high school debating society. Within a year before he would have graduated from college, he first became ill, and then an economic depression forced him to go to work to help support his family. At the outset of the Civil War, the 18-year-old enlisted as a Union soldier, rising from private to major over the war’s four-year duration. His commanding officer, the future President Rutherford Hayes, noted that he was promoted not only for his courage but also for his outstanding gifts as an administrator despite his youth. He became a lawyer after the war, and was a powerful congressman and governor of Ohio before being elected president.Ronald Reagan 130. He was reading at age five and earned As and Bs in elementary school. His high school grades were mostly Bs and his college grades fell to the Cs, admittedly on his part because he focused on sports and other extracurricular activities. These activities included football, basketball, track, swimming, debate, drama, yearbooks, and student newspapers. He was student president in high school and student council president in college. He worked his way through school, doing various jobs including lifeguard.James Buchanan 129. Despite having one eye that was near-sighted and the other far-sighted, Buchanan read voraciously and graduated from college before becoming a lawyer at age 21. He did well scholastically but was penalized for getting into mischief, although the nature of his disciplinary infractions has never come to light.Zachary Taylor 129. A diligent student, Taylor nevertheless received only a basic education and could not spell to save his life. He became an infantry officer when he was 24 and remained in the army until shortly before he was elected president, having risen to the rank of general.Harry S Truman 128. Though he never went to college, Truman was a hard-working if not brilliant student in high school, he did best in history and Latin, taking four years of the language. He also learned to play the piano well. During World War I, he rose to the rank of major in the U.S. Army. He attended law school for two years after the war and was a B student. As well as working a number of sales and clerking jobs and running a small business that failed, he was elected as an administrative judge three times and rose in politics from there, eventually being elected a U.S. Senator.Calvin Coolidge 127. He was a late bloomer who muddled through school until his junior year at Amherst College when he suddenly started excelling in many subjects. (But not in physics for which he got a D!) In his senior year he won a national essay contest. Though he is remembered by the nickname “Silent Cal,” it should be remembered that what he did say was often pithy, not to mention funny; he was chosen by the Amherst Class of 1895 to deliver a traditional humorous speech called the Grove Oration. He was admitted to the bar in 1897 (age 25), and he soon ran for and was elected to local offices, and later state offices leading to the governorship.William Taft 126. He was a consistently good student, graduating second in his high school class and second at Yale University. He went to law school and passed his bar exam shortly before commencement. He was 23. He is the only president also to serve as chief justice of the Supreme Court.Andrew Johnson 125. He did well for a tailor’s apprentice who never spent a day in school. A friend gave him a book of speeches and he taught himself to read a little. It was his wife, however, who taught him to write and do arithmetic. (They married when he was 18 and she was 16, the youngest marriage age for any first lady.) Despite this inauspicious education, the young tailor ran for and was elected to local and then state offices.Ulysses S. Grant 120. He was an above average student in high school and had an aptitude for mathematics. He got an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and though he was fearful that he would fail at the rigorous curriculum, he managed to graduate twenty-first in a class of 39. The U.S. Army had as little confidence in him as he had in himself. Nevertheless, and somewhat to his own surprise, he made a successful career in the service.