I would just use them to pad your resume.  Maybe you could shake them up a little too.  I love talking w/ brainiacs, because a lot of time, they're just an uninformed as the rest of the population, they just hide it better.  

do they accomplish anything or just dwindle away their brain power in self absorption?

Screw with 'em. Tell you want the next meeting to be clothing optional & then don't show up.

[}:D]

Hey, at least you'll be able to hang with McUzi.

I don't want to sound overly condescending, but I get the impression that the bulk of the people who join mensa are people who are "smart but lazy".

What I mean by that is that practically my entire social circle is made up of Ph.D.s and M.D.s from the top schools in their field - and I have never ever met anyone who is a member of mensa or heard anyone ever express an interest in it.  So I get the impression that people who are really smart and highly educated don't need to join a club - because they are using their brains and smarts every day.

The occasional person I have run into who is a member of mensa is usually some guy that barely has a real job, and often doesn't have much in the way of education beyond an undergraduate degree - but can't stop telling people he's a member of mensa. [rolleyes]

I'm not saying mensa members aren't smart - of course they are, but they seem to be the unmotivated smart people as compared to the motivated smart people that are actually using their brains everyday in research, philosophy, or whatever.


What are the SAT/GMAT requirements anyway?

FWIW:  Stay away!

My wife and I [b]WERE[/b] both members.

They are STUFFY and WHINEY nerds.  

(me = IQ161   she = IQ165)

And... believe me --->  She rubs it in every time she gets a chance. [;D]

Damn smart people![:D]

Go to the next meeting, strike up a conversation comparing and contrasting muzzle velocity vs. muzzle energy.
Watch their eyes glaze over with that "deer in the headlights" look....scoff at them, and walk away in superior disgust.

....and bring us back some cheese & crackers.

Have you ever noticed that all the letters that make up "mensa" can be found in "menstrual"? [rolleyes]

Is an IQ of 80 high enough to get in?

<---- proud member of DENSA checking in.

I considered the next step also.  I never got around to it.  I took lots of IQ tests in school.  I remember when I was in 2nd grade I had to start going to reading classes with 5th graders.   I hated it and my parents put me back in my age group.  In high school they tried to cram me into advanced math classes.  I bagged that also, hey two study hall periods ruled!

I took an IQ test in college while taking Psych when I was like 22.  I scored 162 but I think that these tests are not real indicative of any measure of potential success.  I think intellect manifests itself in many ways.  And believe me I don't consider myself a genius by any standard.  I'm a total fuck up.  I'm a college drop out, unemployed, have huge domestic problems, and have not ever held a job more than 3 years.  I have never finished any major task I have started, ever.  I remember reading there was a guy who was a genius and he was a janitor.  

I have a fucked up personality.  Supposedly there's personality profiles of high IQ types. Apparently, in addition to the above deficiencies, I'm of the "standard high IQ type" that can learn just about anything but it must be of my personal interest and typically this type gets bored after mastering such a  task, I enjoy "toys" but grow bored with them quickly also.  I can just as easily juxtapose an idea with a "toy" and grow bored of that after I've explored it to my satisfaction.  I tend to argue for the "sport" of it.  I have no patience with anyone who cannot grasp an idea as quickly as I.  Because of these I find it difficult to converse sometimes even with my wife or family members, it is difficult to make friends sometimes too.  I also make stupid mistakes in my social life as well as other areas that cause me grief even though I know the consequences.

If these are traits that are sometimes associated with high intellect than I'd gladly trade 50 pts for resolution in these problems.

So it would look good on the resume, go for it.  

Sure, but can you tie your own shoes, or do you have velcro on them.

Two words...George Marquardt. He was a member of MENSA and a damn good Chemical Engineer.
Only he decided to move to the midwest and manufacture crystal meth. Well he decided to add a new ingredient...Fentanol! The FBI and DEA figured he probably killed as many as 1000 people before he was stopped. I know not every MENSA head is nutty, but atleast they are plenty smart enough to fool ya!

Valkyrie --->  Boredom & Toys:
You are Soooooo ADHD....
(just like me [:)])

I qualified via their test and my SAT's and went to a meeting (years ago). I decided that they weren't nearly as smart as I was since I wasn't stupid enough to pay their membership fee. Imagine - an annual fee for some group of nerds to acknowledge that you are smart! To me the act of not joining is much better evidence of intelligence than carrying their card.

Yep, that's my impression, too.  It's mostly people who, deep down inside, wish they were in academia and need that extra mental stimulation.  When I was in high school and university, I thought about joining, because I wasn't getting much mental exercise.  Now that I'm graduating this summer and getting a postdoc, I have all the exercise I could want.  [;)]  If I ever went into a less challenging/stressful line of work, I might join.

i'ld give $20 to sit in on the mensa "shotar v. mcuzi" debate on jews and the holocaust.

Six weeks into the second grade, they bumped me to 3rd and put me into an accelerated program where we could do all sorts of projects outside the traditional curriculum. It sucked.

When I was in HS, I scored in the 99.9% percentile on all the standards tests and garnered a 31 on the ACT (equiv to 1400+/- SAT). However, I graduated with a 2.9/4.0 GPA because I was bored and unmotivated. The accelerated programs were filled with the kinds of people who I liked to beat up on.

I can't imagine MENSA would be any different.

Most IQ tests are intelligence tests that correlate your intelligence to the sampled intelligence.  That's all.

If you do a little research you will find that MOST IQ tests are not IQ tests at all.
They are a statistical mess.
I learned about this in Psych 101

Here is an example how they accomplish the answers:

1. Make age groups.
2. Determine who is intelligent using a set guideline.  (not necessarily by the correct test scores)  It is arbitrary.
3. Take those "intelligent" people's answers and those are the answers that reflect high IQ.
(There is the flaw - you don't necessarily have to have the correct answer on the test to get the higher IQ!!)
5. Do a little statistical manipulation and you have your answers.
Note that the answers may be different for different age groups, and the reason kids can score so high is because of the limited sampling of kids.

The reason you ask - because it is not easy to measure intelligence, but if your answers relfect the behavior of a known "brainiac" then you will score high.

Example:
1. What is 2+2?
a. 4
b. 5
c. 6

If the majority of the arbitrarily determined "intelligent" people in your age group picked "b" then the answer is "b".
If you are in a higher age group, the answer is probably "a".

Sometimes the questions do not even make sense, on purpose.  They are for shape or number correlation.  Sometimes you have to make a choice on which one is better.

MENSA = Meetings for Egocentric Nerds Seeking Attention

As a little kid it was recommended by the school that I attended that I  go to a school for "gifted" kids. My parents wisely deep-sixed that idea, since they believed that being surrounded by 4 year olds on the fast track to Pepcid AC consumption and their balloon-headed parents who invariably take credit for the genetic hiccup that resulted in a bright kid would be less than an ideal environment.

Throughout my hoity-toity private grammar school education there were one or two kids who really stood out academically. Of course, they weren't allowed by their parents to watch non-educational TV or join in any reindeer games.

Invariably these kids ended up as total losers in a marketplace which has certain social expectations.

Unless you're a drooling imbecile or Steve Hawking, IQ testing is almost meaningless. It's a snapshot of where you happen to be at at that particular point in time. Diarrhea? Cold? Didn't ace the IQ exam that day?
"Shit, Junior didn't score all that well. And we thought he was such a bright child. I guess we'll have to lower our expectations of him accordingly."

A psychologist who did testing once told me thatwhen parentswanted to know their kids IQ scores he would tell them to just find out what their friends' kids scored and add 5 points because it was all meaningless.

Bottom line: Sharon Stone is a member of MENSA. 'Nuff said.

If you are an IQ snob, [;)] why would you join the least exclusive group? Do a yahoo or google catagory search for one of the other groups. Get into one of them. Them go back to Mensa and tell them they let too many riff-raff join so you went where they only let the really smart people in.

There were these two hispanic guys I used to work with back when.

Anyways, they used to call me "MENSO" is that good?

Exactomundo.

Run away. Let me tell you a little more about the program. It was like the Boy Scouts Merit Badge program with a babysitter called a "guide", not a teacher. We could pick from this long list of special interest areas and then come up with our own project and presentation about that topic. You could literally do anything you wanted to, as limitations were severely frowned upon. There was this whole air of permissiveness, up to and including the permissiveness to refuse to do any of the projects on the list as long as you could come up with a valid justification of why you didn't want to do the list and your own - which is exactly what I did (in the 3rd grade mind you [;)]. It was a program rooted in veiled, liberal humanism.

In fact, I don't know if you ever saw the episode of Beavis & Butthead where their test scores got mixed up and they were put into the special kids program and the accelerated kids got put in the remedial class. That accelerated program is almost a total knockoff of my experience (including playing Dungeons & Dragons).

The only actual Mensa member I know works at Wal-Mart (in the electronics department).  He wears the little blue vest everyday, has a black & white TV, and just bought his first VCR.

Smart but lazy.  That's me.  I'd join, but it really seems like too much trouble.  Besides, I'd rather sneer at their low standards.  Top 2% of the population.  They'll take practically anybody.





California Test of Mental Maturity: IQ 132

(California) Test of Cognitive Skills: IQ 132

Cattell: IQ 148

Stanford Binet, Form L-M: IQ 132

Wechler Adult and Children Scales (WAIS and
WAIS-R, WISC and WISC-R): IQ 130

Otis-Lennon Tests: IQ 132

Otis-Gamma Test: IQ 131

SAT or CEEB (Verbal and Math combined)
prior to 9/77: 1300
from 9/77-1/94: 1250

GRE
prior to 5/94 (verbal and math combined): 1250
effective 5/94 (math + verbal + analytical): 1875

LSAT
prior to 1982: 662
1982-5/91: 39
effective 6/91: 163

ACT Composite (prior to 9/89): 29

Miller Analogies Test raw score: 66

MCAT or GMAT (overall): 95%

Army GCT prior to 10/80: 136

Navy GCT prior to 10/80: 68

Saying you belong to mensa is akin to adding youre a member of Phi Beta Kappa on your CV. Sounds great, means nothing.

TT [wave]

When I was in the 7th grade, Official School Tests said that I had an 11th Grade reading level.

It must have been all those Playboy Magazines.
[naughty]

...what he said.

DrMark

Yup.
Those people, they just lack good old fashioned common sense. They may be able to solve puzzles on a silly test, but they don't know when to come in out of the rain.

I could get in.
I just don't want to.

They are all snooty snobs.
I don't like those kind of people. No sir-ree-bob. Gimme good old fashioned regular down home folk. None of these "MENSA" types [rolleyes]

MENSA means nothing in the real world.

All the [b]real[/b] smart people would never join such a club.
The people who join are losers.
The guy I know who is in MENSA cleans out porta-potties for a living, when he isn't shining shoes in the airport.

Yup.
All a bunch of morons.
Mensah
Huh.

Mensa groups vary from region to region, check out anoter one. It doesn't hurt to add to your resume :)

Haven't attended a meeting in over 15 yrs...  When I first joined, most of the members were out of work *whining* aerospace engineers. ugh. gads, worse than an AA meeting...

Another Mensa group was great--a broad mixture of  interests, with more women members.Made a close friend who is like a sister to this day. She eschews meetings as well.

Trust your instinct!

Gwen in L.A.

Confession time:  I joined MENSA almost 20 years ago for one reason and one reason only: I wanted to meet intelligent, well-educated women.  I assumed that the looks of the women MENSA members would mirror that of the general population: a few stunners, a lot of average-looking women, a few mirror-breakers. After all, I had gone to a college with very high academic standards and a lot of smart female students, and this was the case there.

Wrong.

I went to a total of three meetings, as I couldn't believe that the first meeting was representative.

I can honestly say I don't think I saw even one woman at any of the three meetings who weighed less than 200 pounds.  Many were considerably heavier than that. They were friendly and cheerful, but climbing a flight of stairs was taxing for every one of them.

Their preferred activity at the meetings was playing mathematical games.  I am pretty good at these and enjoy them, but for me they are a solitary pursuit.

I would not have gone to the third MENSA meeting except that my friend Leroy Thompson (who was/is a member) was giving a talk on terrorism since a TWA airliner had been recently hijacked (in Europe IIRC) and one passenger (a Navy frogman) had been executed during a several-day ordeal. Leroy's talk was well-received though I daresay he'd change his advice if he gave it today.

This was the last MENSA meeting I went to.

My conclusion was that there are some very intelligent women in the world who are also interesting and decent-looking, but NONE OF THEM join MENSA. This theory was borne out a bit later when Playboy ran a "Women of MENSA" pictorial.  I have NEVER seen such a bunch of dogs in a Playboy pictorial before or since.  Even *PLAYBOY* couldn't find any good-looking women in all of MENSA! (or for that matter find some average-looking women and make them look good with proper posing, makeup, hair styling, and lighting.)

FWIW the males I saw in the three meetings looked like a normal bunch of guys, neatly dressed in casual clothes. The women were something else, though.

Maybe it's different today but I doubt it.  I'm single again, but I think hanging around the med school or the research lab would pay better dividends.

Or maybe I'll just keep dating strippers, and get my intellectual stimulation from my friends. ;-)

John Ross (Yes, *that* John Ross)

Sounds just like me... Except I never beat up on anyone, I just chased the allmighty dollar, and rolled my eyes everytime one of my classmates treated legalizing pot as 'the great political challenge of the 20th century'... Small minds dream small (pipe) dreams...

I took a WISC at age ten and then later a WAIS-R. ( z-scored above 2.8 ) Semi-eidetic with ok reasoning skills... That and a buck will buy me a coke. woohoo!!1!

MENSA people make me ill.