I’ve been to some Mensa meetings over the years. I’ve never had anyone bring up his/her IQ unless it was really relevant to the conversation.
Here are some guidelines on what to expect and how to act in a Mensa meeting. For example:
And
Mensa was created as a social club. It’s not uncommon for spouses and friends and children to attend meetings, whether or not they’ve been tested, and nobody minds at all, or really even notices, unless it’s time to vote on something. There’s a gun SIG in the local group, and I’m thinking of having my husband take me to the shoots. He’ll have someone to shoot with, and maybe I’ll finally take up shooting targets if I have someone to talk with before and after the shoot.
I’m pleased to see this thread as I’ve been thinking about taking the Mensa test. Mostly if I pass it’d just be a nice little ego boost (which I could do with at the moment).
However, I don’t think passing the test would be much more than an indication that I might be good at answering a certain type of test question.
No results yet, but that’s because I haven’t been job hunting since I joined Triple Nine. The way I see it, it’s part of my investment in my future.
Will it pay off? I don’t know, but that’s just something you have to expect with networking. It might pay off, it might not. I do think that it makes strategic sense to network with people who are likely to be intellectuals, though.
I’d try and join one, but I fear it would clash with my membership in the Big Dick Club…
(Seriously, I don’t really have anything against high IQ societies, but I doubt it’d be something for me, even if I qualified. And what the heck, those uber-brains right up at the top couldn’t come up with a better name for their club than ‘Mega Society’?)
Ditto. I found that there were a few genuinely smart and interesting members, and a lot of members who thought that they were smart and interesting based upon their membership, and then a fair number of dull tools.
The people I work with are, as a whole, some of the smartest people I’ve ever known, and have a wide array of different interests. And what’s better, nobody sits around and brags about how smart he or she is.
You know, I’ve been in several different Mensa chapters, and I’ve NEVER seen or heard anyone brag about their smarts or scores. Ever. Everyone assumes that everyone else at the meeting or gathering is smart. Now, granted, there are some discussions about qualifications (one guy has a doctorate in religious studies, another gal has a Master’s in geology, who is more qualified to discuss Young Earth Creationism?) but mostly it’s not really a topic of conversation. What would we say? “I’m in the 99th percentile”? “I scored 151 on (test x) but only 145 on (test y), but I’m in the 97th percentile on (test x) and the 99th percentile on (test y)”? We’d much rather discuss what we’ve read lately, or the most recent attempt to grill chocolate.
I’ve never joined one, but it seems to me you can accomplish basically the same thing by joining a chess club, a bridge club, or whatever. Or by living in a town with a lot of educated people.
I phrased that poorly. I meant less that people speak about their intelligence at the general meetings and more that SIGs provided (I would assume) an immediate focus to start a conversation from if you’re new. A common interest beyond having passed an IQ test. Like I said, the meeting I attended, no one was trying to impress me with their smarts.
If her local group is your local group, I don’t blame her. I know people in your local group and they’re a fun crowd!
In my experience, groups do vary widely. Years ago, when I lived in a different state, I had friends who were in Mensa and who tried to get me to join. Unfortunately, I found I didn’t care for the company. In fact, years later, a couple of new friends here mentioned Mensa to me, as one of them put it, the look which crossed my face read, “Oh. And you seemed like such nice people.” I went to the local Regional Gathering (RG) anyway, found I had a blast, and joined up. I even met my husband there. To me, Mensa is purely a social group, and I’m in it because I enjoy their company. I even found them less pretentious than the local branch of the Society for Creative Anachronism, although, again, I reailze mileage does vary.
Since we do have some Mensans on this board, if anyone’s interested in getting a Dopefest on the schedule for this year’s AG, please let me know by Thursday, the 23rd so I can arrange to get it on the program schedule.
I have been a member of both Intertel and ISPE, but neither ever did anything, and the newsletters were boring, and so I let my memberships lapse. Mensa is much more interesting, better organized, has activities people actually want to participate in, and the people are generally not so pretentious (although some, of course, are – that’s just the way it goes in any group).
That seems to be the problem I’m observing. The high IQ societies seem to be built completely on exclusivity. The whole point to joining is that not very many people are qualified to join. I’ve looked around at members links from some of these sites. There are a certain few who join EVERY group they qualify for, and then proudly list them where everyone can see. My reaction to these is :rolleyes:.
BTW, in looking around at these things I came across iQcuties for high IQ dating. [Disclaimer: Not my site, not affiliated, blah, blah]
Those of you in the Chicago area should note that your city has a very large, active, and fun local chapter. Their regional gathering, HalloweeM, is an absolute blast.
My impression of MENSA (and other groups of that sort) is that it’s for smart people who don’t get to meet many other smart people in their day to day lives. It’s not the CEOs and Scientists who join, it’s the housewives and office clerks.
Granted, my impression may be wrong but it’s not exactly motivated me to join.
Oh I have this problem all the time. I don’t know if I’d be smart enough for Mensa though. It’s gotten much better in college at least.
Last fall I got in argument about whether or not Florida had different trees then up here in Michigan. My exact argument ended up being boiled down to “how many palm trees have you seen around here?”. Also I’ve heard Sweden has trash and sewage flowing in the streets because it’s a 3rd world country. Columbus founded America. Canada is full of communists.
Many things like that. Fortunetly I remember the moral of this Story, and let it pass.
It isn’t obvious, and unless I had distinguished myself in my posts on this board, there’s no way for it to be obvious.
If you’ve seen any other threads on this board regarding Doper IQ, you would realize that the self-reported IQ’s are so high that the probability of all these super-geniuses congregating on one message board is *very *close to 0.
However, despite the unlikeliness, the meme persists that your average Doper’s IQ is well above average.
Therefore my statement was funny because no matter what I think of myself or what the average Doper thinks of him/herself, it is NOT obvious that most of us would qualify for high IQ societies.
Clearly not all Dopers can be considered high IQ because so many of them still get WHOOSHED!
I joined Mensa a couple of years ago just to see if I could get in, as I have never had an IQ test or anything. I got in, paid my dues, and started getting the newsletter for the local chapter.
They had photos of the dinners they held at a restaurant once a month. They all looked over 60. I’m 30. That pretty much killed my interest in Mensa. I didn’t renew my membership after the first year.
Nothing against older people, of course, I probably would have enjoyed being around them, but I guess I didn’t want to be the only kid in the group.
