Any Dopers in high IQ societies?

In My Humble Opinion
1

We all know that Dopers are some of the smartest people on the planet. Does anyone belong to any high IQ societies?

From Wikipedia


High IQ societies typically accept a variety of standardized intelligence tests. Some conduct proprietary or alternative tests to determine membership eligibility.

    * 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 0.7% (99.3rd percentile; 1/147; IQ 137 sd15): Sunesis Society(Defunct)
    * 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; 3/1000; 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
    * Top 0.13% (99.87th percentile; 13/10000; IQ 145 sd15, IQ 148 sd16): CIVIQ Society
    * Top 0.1% (99.9th percentile; 1/1000; 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 0.003% (99.997th percentile; 3/100000; IQ 160 sd15, IQ 164 sd16): Prometheus Society, Tetra Society
    * Top 0.001% (99.999th percentile, 1/100000; IQ 164 sd 15, IQ 168 sd 16): eximia high IQ society, The Ultranet[3]
    * Top 0.0001% (99.9999th percentile; 1/1000000; IQ 172 sd15, IQ 176 sd16): Mega Society, GenerIQ Society
    * Top 0.0000001% (99.9999999th percentile; 1/1,000,000,000; IQ 190 sd15, IQ 196 sd16): Giga Society

Obviously I, like most of you, qualify for the majority of these societies. Anyone a member? Are any of them any fun? Anyone want to join one en masse and take it over?

2

I belong to the Minerva society; you don’t have it listed but it only accepts the top 0.0000000015% (1/6.7 Billion). Currently, I am the only member, but I have a (maybe vain) hope that one day someone will join me. I have lots of fun, mostly by pointing and laughing at the mere mortals that surround me.

3

I am curious about the more exclusive clubs than Mensa. How do they do the testing these days? I’ve heard that IQ testing of adults is problematic. I apparently scored quite high on an IQ test when I was a kid. My Mom crowed about it being, “Genius”, level but would never tell me exactly what my IQ was.

4

Here’s a link to which tests are accepted by the different societies:

This page does not seem to be completely up to date, but it does list just about all the tests that are used for entrance requirements. Some societies use academic tests like the ACT, SAT, GRE, and GMAT.

5

I qualified for Mensa based on an IQ test I took when I was 12. I joined when I was 16 and renewed after the first year but that was it. I went to a couple of events and read the newsletter every month. I found the whole thing to be annoying which is why I didn’t renew again.

6

That’s kind of sad. From the little looking I’ve done, Mensa seems to be the only society that focuses on the social aspect of a “society.” I checked out my local Mensa group, but it seemed like there was more fun to be had hanging out with my board game group.

7

I hate to break it to you, but there are a couple of societies that you don’t qualify for:

The Grail Society (1 out of 100,000,000,000)

Seems like it should be a typo, but it’s not. That’s right, the admission requirement for Paul Cooijmans’s Grail Society is a whopping one out of 100 billion. This would be the smartest person who ever lived, and Paul’s Test for Genius supposedly has the ceiling to identify this person. This is one one society that’s not likely to have much political infighting.
**
Exa Society (1 out of 1,000,000,000,000,000)**

The Exa Society is a name suggested by Richard May in the August 1983 issue of Vidya, the journal of the Triple Nine Society, as a society that would accept only one entity per 10-to-the-15th power, meant as a parody of the “Mega” Society’s name.7 In the same article, Richard May suggested the “Plus Sigma Society,” meant as a parody of the Four Sigma Society, whose admission level being flexible, would be defined as always one sigma or standard deviation higher than the next highest high-IQ society’s admission standard.

The Aleph-(3) Society (transfinite admissions requirement)

The Aleph-(3) Society is a name suggested by Richard May in the October 1986 issue of Vidya for the world’s first high-IQ society with a transfinite admissions requirement. May wrote that “the entity commonly referred to as ‘god’ is only at the aleph-(1) level, according to the scale of the precise quantification of divinity.”

“The Aleph” is May’s ultimate achievement in the realm of naming ultra-high-IQ societies. Hoeflin [the source of this material] assumes that this name refers to “the set of all sets,” which Cantor showed to be a logical impossibility. In his October 1986 article, May says that some have described this society as “analogous to a sort of cosmic Klein bottle, having neither ‘inside’ nor ‘outside’, which would be too parochial a burden,” and May concludes that this society does not accept “unnormed, unrecognized, and non-‘g’-saturated tests, such as the somewhat obscure Klein-Bottle Test [an allusion to Ed Cyr’s “Mobius Test”], which is allegedly so easily confused with other tests, as proof of qualification, or as a ‘backup’ for a spurious Ripley’s [Believe It Or Not] listing. Such is the austere rigor of the Aleph.”

8

Looks like my GRE score qualifies me for the Triple Nine club. Is there any particular reason to join? Would I get anything out of it?

I thought I might qualify for the Prometheus Society, but to get in you have to have a combined Verbal + Quantitative score of 1610, which, considering they are scored out of 800 each, might prove problematic.

9

I’ve been a member of Mensa for over 20 years; met my best friends there. Good times, many, many good times.

10

I appreciate that some people like to join social clubs. However, if it’s only a social club, then I doubt I’d be interested. I already joined a club for people who could score well on the GRE: grad school (and to be honest, I never talk to any of those people any more anyway). Actually, all the people I work with would qualify for at least one of these clubs, and I have no particular desire to spend time with any of them after work hours.

11

All I can say is that I found the Los Angeles are Mensa group to be lame in around 1981. I don’t want to paint with too wide a brush. The final straw was an article in the local newsletter. People were asked to write funny stories about how their “non-M” spouses figured out something before they did. I found it to be insulting beyond belief. “Haha. Me, the genius, had to have my spouse, who couldn’t pass our test, figure out how to open a box one time.”

12

(my emphasis)

Please explain why this should be obvious.

13

My GRE scores would qualify me for MENSA if they accepted the newest version of the test, but I seem to recall reading somewhere that they don’t.

Meh, not my cup of tea in any case. I just get an elitist and exclusionary vibe from these groups. The only reason I’d ever join one would be for networking purposes to find a better job, but I’d rather hang with my wife or study group any day of the week. What good is intelligence if you only wind up hanging with 1% of the population?

14

The part I liked was getting to meet a variety of people *outside *my profession. I’ve met people from artists to zoologists and everything in between. People with PhDs and GEDs.

Although I was inspired by people in Mensa to continue my education and to enter a field I never thought I could master, for the most part it’s not really great for job networking. And most members don’t put their membership on resumes. I never mentioned it after the first time I got sniped at for making a mistake when "after all, you’re so smart. " As if intelligent people never made mistakes. Hah!

15

I took the Mensa entry test ages ago, mainly on a lark. My mother saw an ad in the paper for it and said she’d pay the $20 just to see if I got in so I went and did it. The test seemed rather easy (or maybe I’m just that brilliant!) and I passed it with flying colors and got to find out my IQ score and all that. Yay me.

I think I joined but it was long enough ago that I don’t remember if I joined or if I just went on a trial sort of basis. The people seemed nice enough and no one seemed as though they were trying to lord their giant brain over me or anything. I can’t speak for anyone else’s experiences with Mensa members but the typical “They’re all stuck up on how intelligent they are” angle I usually hear wasn’t what I experienced at all. There was, unsurprisingly, a large number of men there who probably don’t date a hell of a lot so if you’re a woman hoping to meet somewhat romantically inept men in their mid-30’s you now have a face-to-face option instead of relying on the internet.

The biggest benefit, which I never really pursued, was the SIGs, Special Interest Groups. They had a SIG for damned near everything from comic books to wine tasting to fashion to rock climbing to chess to hot balloon rides. Some of them probably would have been pretty good times and at least more focused than saying “Soo… uhhh… I’m smart. How’s about you?”

The biggest reason why I never went with it was because the meeting location way the hell up in the northern suburbs and I lived closer to the southwest 'burbs and it was a good 90 min drive just to go up for a 90 minute meeting. So I let it drop but not because the people were pricks or anything, I just couldn’t justify the drive.

Interestingly, Mensa sent me a renewal form out of the blue back in January. This is after not having been a member in… well, at least a decade. They’re still having their Chicago area meetings up north 90min away as well, just like ten years ago. I didn’t rejoin.

16

Apparently because he can woosh better than 99.9999% of society.

17

The Giga society looks like a scam to get people to pay for IQ tests. All the accepted tests are created by one guy and cost 20 pounds each.

18

I belong to the Triple Nine Club. So far, my primary benefit has been opportunities to connect with other members via LinkedIn. That, and the opportunity to mention such membership on my resume.

Mind you, I’m still hopeful that other benefits will arise. For now though, merely networking with intelligent people – even over the Internet – strikes me as valuable enough.

19

:smiley: Is there a group for that?

20

Would you care to elaborate at all? Have you gotten anything from your LinkedIn connections? Have you interacted/corresponded with any of them? What’s been the reaction when potential employers see it on your resume?