Ask HN - Is it worth joining Mensa? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN - Is it worth joining Mensa?

26 pointsvijayr67 comments

I was discussing this with a friend of mine, he is in favor of it, and I am not sure (assuming of course, we qualify). Any MENSA members here? How would you describe the experience?

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I joined MENSA for the card. When I went to Kinko's to laminate it, I didn't read the instructions on the wall, and the laminate melted to the machine. I had to get the Kinko's guy to open the machine for me, but by then the card was bubbling. When he scraped it out and saw what it was, he laughed. He laughed so hard.

Is it worth joining MENSA? If you want to belong to a club that would have me as a member.

Is this a true story? Either way, it's one of the biggest laughs I have in a while.

Yes. It's so in character that I'm not even able to be ashamed of it anymore.

It took me a few minutes to get this story, but once I got it I laughed so hard.

I still didn't get it :(

You can't join then :)

You may find this information helpful in deciding; it's an article called "A Short (and Bloody) History of the High I.Q. Societies"

http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/history.html

An excerpt (Dr. Ware is one of the cofounders of Mensa):

At a 1996 convention celebrating the 50th anniversary of Mensa's founding, Dr. Ware (now 81 years old) voiced hope "that Mensa will have a role in society when it gets through the ages of infancy and adolescence ... but at least it has satisfied its members." Dr. Ware seemed disheartened by the Mensans' seeming inability to focus beyond self-gratifying pursuits and apply their collective brain-power to problems facing the world today. "I do get disappointed that so many members spend so much time solving puzzles," Ware said. "It's a form of mental masturbation. Nothing comes of it."

It seems to me the only reason to join MENSA is to brag about the fact that you got in.

I think it's kind of gone the other way now too. If someone "brags" about having joined MENSA I'd pretty much roll my eyes.

Reminds me of this Feynman rant about honor groups:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3164300309410618119#...

I joined Mensa back in high school because they held cocktail parties... The most enjoyable part of the Mensa experience for me was taking the test - there were a couple of lousy (IMHO) questions, and unlike other exams with practical consequences, I felt free to write my (possibly totally off-base) criticisms on the exam.

It's really not very difficult to get into MENSA. The test is about the equivalent of a US public school gifted program. I think the "average" hackernews user would pass without much of a problem. It's far more difficult (and prestigious in my opinion) to get into YCombinator.

If you're looking to meet interesting and intelligent people, you're probably better off finding a community oriented website with content that appeals to you and going to meet ups. Personally I would much prefer an HN meetup to a MENSA gathering.

Let's not bash MENSA too much. Their login page has a great new UI:

http://www.mensa.org//loginaction.php?action=error&acc=1... the new Mensa, now XSS compatible!')</script>

I sent them an email, let's see how long they take to fix it.

No. My sister is a member (in the UK, but it's likely much the same) and I thought about joining too, until I saw their magazine, which is basically a heap of self-congratulatory wank... 'will asteroids hit earth, and what should Mensans do about it?' 'why the world would be better if it was run by Mensans', 'Why we are special' ...and so on. These were 1000 word articles at most, not even as interesting or challenging as something in Scientific American (after it went into the toilet).

It has as little content as any other kind of social club newsletter, but is vastly more pretentious. They do hold events and so forth, and they are much the same as the magazine with the addition of beer or tea, depending on what time of day they are held. Maybe it's like scientology, where the outer members talk about how great it is and promote it to everyone else, and the inner core enjoy a privileged lifestyle awash with drugs, sex and money, but I wasn't very interested in finding out the rest. Frankly, I was depressed by how petty and parochial it turned out to be, but perhaps that's because I had retained my childish impression of how fabulous a special club for only smart people would be.

The drugs, sex and money part sounds quite good though.

I would recommend getting in contact with your local group and trying to meet a few members. What you get out of it could depend largely on how active your local group is and whether or not it's one you fit into. My local group is made up primarily of a much older crowd so I don't get much out of it besides a subscription to the Mensa magazine and local newsletter. There's a very active GenX/GenY Yahoo group, but it tends to be dominated by a handful of right-wing trolls. No thanks.

You need to coordinate a time to take the admission test through a local member anyway, assuming you haven't taken another test that could qualify you. There are quite a few that can be accepted so you'll want to look into it. It's possible you've already scored high enough on one of their accepted tests and you only need to submit the results.

If you don't anticipate being active in your local group you could go ahead and join anyway just to put it on a resume, although there are mixed opinions on how that's perceived by potential employers. I mention on my resume that I'm a member and I don't think it's ever been a problem, but I've heard about managers who toss resumes in the trash for it. As I write this I see that another commenter has said that they roll their eyes when someone mentions being a member. The reality probably is that very few people will be impressed by it.

The admission test itself is surprisingly simple. There are actually two of them and you only need to pass one. The first test is the Wonderlic and the second is a test designed by Mensa. If you fail both you don't get to reapply. You never learn your score. You're only told whether you passed or failed.

The tests contain nothing like those ridiculous Mensa brain teaser books. They're the types of questions that most reasonably intelligent people can answer fairly easily. They're not unlike the questions you see on the online Mensa practice test or one of those tickle.com IQ tests. What makes it difficult is that you've got insane time constraints. You end up with about 12-15 seconds per question. One test is fill in the blank and the other is multiple guess scantron. You basically have to be writing your answer while reading and solving the next problem. The person who proctored my exam said that there's about a 60% failure rate. It probably says more about the people applying than the actual test, but I thought it was interesting.

Is it worth it? I don't know. I don't get much out of the membership. I was interested in meeting up with similar minded people to have discussions, etc., but I think more than anything it was a personal challenge. I wanted to know if I could do it. As for the interaction with smart people, I think I get more out of HN than I could ever get out of Mensa.

Thank you so much for the detailed reply. The topic just popped up while talking; its definitely not for bragging, or adding it to the resume.

12-15 seconds is insane. Would need some practice, if the time constraint is going to be that hard.

The time constraints are doable. Like I said, the questions aren't terribly difficult. The most important thing is that you bring your A game. You could be more than qualified, but if you get up in the morning and don't feel 110% ready there's a good chance you won't pass. I felt great the day I took my test. There are plenty of other days that I don't think I'd pass.

The best advice I can give for the test is if you don't feel like you're ready to kick some ass you're best off rescheduling. Once you show up and see the test you can't take it again.

The Wonderlic is probably the harder test because the questions get progressively more difficult. The first few are a joke, but the ones at the end are pretty tough. You won't finish. Almost no one does. I think I answered 43 questions and there's no way I got them all correct.

I also have to recommend going to a local group meeting. In my area, hopefuls can go to one or two meetings for a small fee to check it out. Going to a meeting as a hopeful definitely opened my eyes - the crowd wasn't what I expected at all.

That being said, I joined and never went to a meeting as a member. I used the Mensa Member tagline on my resume for a few years until I had enough experience that it wouldn't make a difference.

That's kinda interesting, crazy and funny at the same time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_IQ_society. To me it mostly looks like this is to make the members feel somewhat outstanding, making up for their own social deficiencies.

# Top 5% (95th percentile; 1/20; IQ 124 sd15, IQ 126 sd16): International High IQ Society

# Top 2% (98th percentile; 1/50; IQ 130 sd15, IQ 132 sd16): Encefálica Society, High Potentials Society, Mensa International, Mysterium Society

# Top 1% (99th percentile; 1/100; IQ 135 sd15, IQ 137 sd16): Intertel, Top One Percent Society

# Top 0.5% (99.5th percentile; 1/200; IQ 139 sd15, IQ 141 sd16): Colloquy (Society), Poetic Genius Society[2]

# Top 0.37% (99.63rd percentile; 1/270; IQ 140 sd15): Infinity International Society, HispanIQ International Society

# Top 0.3% (99.7th percentile; 3/1,000; IQ 141 sd15, IQ 144 sd16): Cerebrals Society

# Top 0.2% (99.8th percentile; 1/500; IQ 143 sd15, IQ 146 sd16): Exactiq High IQ Society, ePiq

# Top 0.13% (99.87th percentile; 13/10,000; IQ 145 sd15, IQ 148 sd16): CIVIQ Society

# Top 0.1% (99.9th percentile; 1/1,000; IQ 146 sd15, IQ 149 sd16): Glia Society, International High IQ Society Milenija, International Society for Philosophical Enquiry, Iquadrivium Society[2], One-in-a-Thousand Society[2], Triple Nine Society

# Top 0.07% (99.93th percentile; IQ 148 sd15, IQ 151 sd16): ISI-Society

# Top 0.003% (99.997th percentile; 3/100,000; IQ 160 sd15, IQ 164 sd16): Prometheus Society, Tetra Society,Homo Universalis Society

# Top 0.001% (99.999th percentile, 1/100,000; IQ 164 sd15, IQ 168 sd16): Eximia High IQ Society, GenerIQ Society, The Ultranet

# Top 0.00001% (99.9999th percentile,1/1,000,000; IQ 172 sd15, IQ 176 sd16): The Mega Society, The Omega Society

# Top 0.000003% (99.99997th percentile; IQ 175 sd15, IQ 180 sd16): OLYMPIQ Society, PARS Society

Oh, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination

I would think that any standardized measure claiming to accurately measure beyond 2.5 sds would be a very noisy measure, almost pointlessly so

any standardized measure claiming to accurately measure beyond 2.5 sds would be a very noisy measure, almost pointlessly so

Yes. Even better than saying "measure" would be to say "estimate of rank order," but indeed it has been well known for a long time that IQ tests have their greatest error of estimation at the high end of the IQ scale. Lewis Terman, the developer of the first widely used school IQ test in the United States, the Stanford-Binet, noted that error of estimation in IQ scores increases as IQ scores are above the mean.

"The reader should not lose sight of the fact that a test with even a high reliability yields scores which have an appreciable probable error. The probable error in terms of mental age is of course larger with older than with young children because of the increasing spread of mental age as we go from younger to older groups. For this reason it has been customary to express the P.E. [probable error] of a Binet score in terms of I.Q., since the spread of Binet I.Q.'s is fairly constant from age to age. However, when our correlation arrays [between Form L and Form M] were plotted for separate age groups they were all discovered to be distinctly fan-shaped. Figure 3 is typical of the arrays at every age level.

http://learninfreedom.org/Terman%201937%20Figure%203.gif

"From Figure 3 it becomes clear that the probable error of an I.Q. score is not a constant amount, but a variable which increases as I.Q. increases. It has frequently been noted in the literature that gifted subjects show greater I.Q. fluctuation than do clinical cases with low I.Q.'s . . . . we now see that this trend is inherent in the I.Q. technique itself, and might have been predicted on logical grounds." (Terman & Merrill, 1937, p. 44)

Terman, Lewis & Merrill, Maude (1937). Measuring Intelligence: A Guide to the Administration of the New Revised Stanford-Binet Tests of Intelligence. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Interesting. With the most restrictive category, only 200 people in the world could be admitted. Most people are somewhat skeptical of IQ tests, but does anyone actually think that any test could be accurate enough to pick the 200 most intelligent humans in the world?

does anyone actually think that any test could be accurate enough to pick the 200 most intelligent humans in the world?

Not a chance. None of the tests used for admission to such high-IQ societies have ever been properly validated.

An ex co-worker was partially obsessed with the topic of joining mensa. He used to bring it up in conversation all the time, mostly about how close he was to getting in and how much he wanted to get in.

One day, the director of the company for whom we worked heard us talking about it. She said, "You know what mensa means, right?" She's a native Spanish speaker.

My co-worker never brought it up again after that.

EDIT: Aw, c'mon...googling the definition is half the fun. ;)

For those who don't know Spanish: http://www.merriam-webster.com/spanish/mensa

aaaaaw, what an irony :-)

BTW, that's Mexican slang. For most Spanish speakers outside of Mexico mensa has no meaning.

At least here in Chile, when somebody calls you 'menso' it is understood that you are being called dumb. But it's connotation isn't too negative, it's rather familiar and cutesy, probably because we got it from El Chavo del ocho :)

A developer I worked a lot with is a member, and he has lots of fun trolling their forums. Apparently a lot of mensa members are easy prey because they think they have to come up with a clever answer when in fact they're being pwned.

That's the only thing he uses it for though.

I once had a girlfriend that had joined MENSA to meet smart guys, but gave up dating them because they were all such geeks.

She ended up with me. Talk about irony.

the people here seem so self-motivated that i would be surprised if many of them would want to pay yearly fees to be told they are smart, as opposed to simply telling themselves they're smart or, better yet, not really worrying about it at all.

those looking for a new, ultra-stimulating social circle may think mensa offers more than their local universities or alumni associations, but i'm not so sure. i would also worry that mensa might select for a unique type of person who is highly invested in his perceived intelligence (which is often to the detriment of friendship and productive conversation). i wonder if anyone can tell us more about the organization...

No. Mensa is about the intellectual level of a small regional SF convention.

That... is about the best and most down-to-earth description I've heard. Thanks. I will remember it.

what is SF an acronym for? Science Fiction, San Francisco ?

Science Fiction.

Though a San Francisco convention is a surprisingly interesting idea. Where would you hold it? Oh, right...

Well, he said it would be "regional", so I guess it could just as easily be in New Jersey.

My opinion is that MENSA is for people whose main accomplishment in life is doing well on an IQ test. And who are insecure enough about it to pay someone else to validate that accomplishment. This opinion is shared by a number of people that I respect.

If you actually do something that requires using your brain, you should meet plenty of other people who have good brains and have done something with them. The "have done something" bit makes them into more interesting people to be around. Plus you don't have to pay for that privilege.

Random disclaimer. I am not a MENSA member. However my GRE scores qualify me for membership in most high IQ organizations, including MENSA.

My dad signed me up for MENSA and Triple 9 when I was seven years old (doubt I'd get into Triple 9 today). Never really participated in anything, so I don't have much concrete experience, but part of why I've never bothered is because I'd rather spend my time using my intelligence than sitting congratulating myself for it.

If you want to meet bright people, I guess it could be worth it, but keep in mind that they're drawn from the subset of bright people who are terribly fixated on how bright they are.

No.

Groups within a community are generally good ways to meet new people and make connections, but I haven't seen any benefit in Mensa specifically. Go join a *UG or some group oriented toward finishing projects, not self-celebration.

I have no experience with Mensa myself, but generally, you don't want to hang around people who have a lot (money, intelligence, looks), what you want to do is to hang around people who do a lot (entrepreneurs, hackers, writers, artists, physically active people).

And, for the inevitable objection: yes, you could be a do-er who also ended up having a lot. But the reverse is not necessarily true.

Obligatory Dilbert: http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/1992-02-03/

Not in my experience - in Australia, Mensa is a sort of lonely-hearts club for single, middle-aged programmers. The few meetings I went to were as tedious, awkward and onanistically self-congratulatory as you would expect, and I let my membership lapse soon after.

I've heard that in other parts of the world membership can be very worth-while, as long as there are active SIGs within your field of interest.

Oh, and whatever you do, please don't put Mensa membership on your CV, unless you want to look like a prat. Joining Mensa is not an accomplishment - if you're applying for a job in the upper tiers of any white-collar profession, being in the 98th percentile is pretty much a given.

As Stephen Hawking said, people who boast about their IQ are losers.

Yes. Primary source for the quotation:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/magazine/12QUESTIONS.html

I would say it depends on your reasons for joining. I have a much older cousin who belonged at one time. We haven't kept in touch, so I don't know if he stayed. He apparently got a lot out of it socially, but I think that was back before the Internet became such a convenient hookup for like-minded individuals. He once suggested I try to get in because I wanted to go back to college and they apparently have a small scholarship program. I never got around to it.

But if you are looking primarily for a social experience, I think it's best to participate in something which happens to be "intellectual" in nature but is a genuine personal interest -- an astronomy club, an online forum with a topic of interest, etc. Although close friends and married couples (supposedly) tend to be within about 10 IQ points of each other, just being roughly equally smart doesn't guarantee you will have similar interests or compatible personalities. I have found that certain topics online tend to attract bright people. If you are genuinely interested in the topic and are there for that reason, it is one of the better means to find folks you have a good shot at hitting it off with socially. I even know of people who met that way and ended up married.

I joined when I was around 14, and left (if you can ever leave?) when I was 17. One of those precocious-gifted-child things; and the child subscriptions are fairly low. It was worth it to get the validated IQ score, and bizarrely, the child-MENSA magazine that circulated at the time led to my first real job.

So it can pay off, both if you've ever been curious about your IQ (not that anyone believes such things, but it's still great fun trumping an arrogant arse at a party) and because it's yet another way of networking. But the sort of people who join MENSA might not really be the sort of people you want to network with.

The job story:

An advert had a programming puzzle and an address to send solutions to. I solved the puzzle and realised it was a fiendish form of recruitment for a summer job at a fairly boring, run-of-the-mill web development company (oh, the glory days of 1999).

I also made a few 'friends' through it at the time, but I thought they were all up themselves. (They were. One later turned up to Cambridge, a year after me; can you spell 'socially awkward'? I bet he could.)

> but it's still great fun trumping an arrogant arse at a party

lol. to 'trump' with the score on an IQ test... i think i'd laugh so hard i'd shit my pants if someone says "hey, i have 150 IQ, i'm right dammit"

Thing is, IQ matters to the arrogant arses that you might want to trump. So for a normal person, the response to "hey, I have 150 IQ, I'm right damnit" is "Oh my god, I can't believe he just said that. Or thinks it matters." But to the person with the 150 IQ who's sure he's right because of it, it may be somewhat more effective to say "Yeah, I have 170, can we talk about something else now?"

Yeah, this is the context I mean, though more so on IQ scores themselves, rather than "I'm right because my IQ is x". In some wannabe-intellectual circles, the "My IQ is.." dicksize contest does come up, and it's fun being able to quietly speak up and shut them all up.

If you are looking for seeds for a social life in a strange city, then yes. But remember that membership in Mensa is not an achievement, it signifies nothing other than that you scored well on a standardised test.

I was a member of Mensa till I found that it was totally useless. Your mileage may vary so it is worthwhile understanding what you want to get out of it. Here are some things that I have found:

* a benefit to put it on your resume: NO

* a place to meet like minded people: MAYBE but you may have better luck at your local pub/bar/gym/grocery store

* a group that sends out an interesting newsletter: MAYBE but it depends on your local chapter

* a valuable recognition similar to "Won Nobel Prize", "Went to the Moon", "Climbed Mt. Everest": NO

* an indication of "superior intellect": NO, Mensa is the 98 percentile group, in theory the membership could be 2% of over 5 billion. Not really superior. If you want that, try for TNS (Triple Nine Society)

* a good way to get a credit card: NO, the people at Mensa International and the people you have to talk to when you get this card are not members of Mensa :(

What's the point of being a Mensa member?

The first rule of Mensa is you have to talk about Mensa.

Not unless you need to be a member to get the puzzle books and magazines. I don't know what the materials are like these days but growing up we had a few MENSA books around the house full of brain teases and logic problems, I used to love going through them and trying to solve (or rarely, actually solving) the problems.

I don't know what the point of actually being a member is though, unless you're going to get a T-shirt, an "I'm with MENSA" truckers hat or something along those lines...

I qualified with my GRE scores in the last batch of GRE scores what was accepted by MENSA... I hear it lets you get car insurance discounts from some places? Logically, it seems like one more small trinket to enable in the equipment of Keefe (sorry for the dorky WoW analogy) but I have always been resistant to doing it.... maybe it's a good way to meet like minded people though?

Almost nobody knows I'm a member.

While my accomplishments are respectable from an objective standpoint, I joined to talk about my relative underachievement. Probably anyone outside of mensa thinks that's crazy.

The people at local meetings seem nice enough to me. Even if the local groups suck where you are, there are online SIGs which might be worthwhile. The online SIGs cover a very wide range of topics.

I once thought I wanted to join Mensa, then when I hit about 14 I decided, "nawwwwww".

I came to this decision partly because I discovered that it's often easier to hate intelligent people, something which has only been reinforced in my years at college.

Maybe you'll meet Asia Carrera.

I found this one, similar to MENSA http://www.triplenine.org/

Haven't heard of it before, just found it while looking for MENSA related info.

I am a MENSA member. I've been to a few meetings and regularly enjoy reading the Intelligencer. Other than that, nothing much, life as usual.

Why not join a hackerspace instead?

is it useful on resumes considering that college degrees are already a stand in for IQ?

> considering that college degrees are already a stand in for IQ?

What?

Economists of education think much of the purported value of a college degree comes not from what college study adds to the value of a job-seeker, but from what a college degree signals about characteristics the job-seeker had to have to be admitted to college. One thing a college degree signals is a THRESHOLD level of scholastic ability (the better term for what IQ scores estimate). In the United States, there are severe legal difficulties related to using mental test scores to screen job applicants--the same difficulties don't relate to requiring all job applicants to have a college degree.

It's a fraternity.. don't waste your time.

(disclaimer: never had anything to do with it nor do I know anyone who has)

I joined to get laid. Worked well for me, YMMV :)

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