Is anyone here a MENSA member?

Post Reply New Topic

I thought about taking the MENSA entrance exam, but talked myself out of taking it because I heard that it mainly measures verbal intelligence, which I suck at, and because I know I would be setting myself up for a life long depression if I take an IQ test and it turns out that my IQ is like 105 or 107.

Is there any MENSA member here? I was just wondering if you could tell me more about what the entrance exam is like.

You don't need to take the entrance exam. Any IQ test will do. Actually, the entrance exam is a little heavy on the nonverbal side, iirc.

hey alex, long time no seeing you!

When did you take the entrance exam? Is its level of difficulty similar to that of the myriad of IQ tests that can be found online?

I'm Mensa member. I don't know where you are, but in my country it has to be the official Mensa-Test, not any kind of IQ test. It took 5 hours, every 5 or 7 minutes we had to turn the page to new questions. But I do not think its verbal oriented, it has a lot of logic and memorizing tests, many are with numbers or geopetric forms. The trick is, to do it all quickly. The tests are so easy that even with IQ-below 100 you could do it, but it would take longer. So you would have to go quickly through every page to solve nearly all questions in the given 5 or 7 minutes. That can be trained however, so that you know in an instant, what is expected of you on that special page without loosing too much time finding out. There are Mensa-training-tests and also training books (not Mensa) and Computer-programmes for IQ training and self-test.
That helps esp. an aspie, because the tests are made in large groups with sometines sticky air and distracting noise....

But more important: why would you want to be a Mensa Member?
I joined before I was diagnosed aspie, I thought I might find people like me in that group. But it was not at all like that - most of them are soooo stupidly social, all is about getting together and gossip, and about competition for posts and influence etc.... ihhhh. And there are a lot of persons in there, that have a high IQ but no education, no interest in anything, nothing to say or a no good character - just like everywhere in groups I guess.
But you find a higher percentage of aspies in there than you can ever imagine and there sub-groups withing Mensa for aspies, but as they do not like to travel far for huge parties, they all cannot profit much from the typical Mensa activities.
I de-activated my Mensa membership for the time being, I found that a high IQ is not so much a common element as a basis for friendship than I thought. But since I passed the test once, I can re-activate my membership at any time.

I hope that helps.

Hi Mw99,

I have been a member of MENSA for over a year. In England they give you two tests the 'classical' test and the 'culture fair' test.

The classical test is what one would usually expect 'hot is to cold as black is to...' etc sort of questions. This is what people usually refer to when they say my IQ is blah blah blah... but each test gives a different number for the same person too so sometimes is easier to talk in percentiles of the population (which I shall do herin). I scored in the top 4% of candidates in this exam - considering that you need 2% or less to get in I failed this exam.

The 'culture fair' test is designed for people whose first language isn't English (works for Aspies quite nicely too though X-D). Not a single word features on the paper and it's all about pattern spotting, topological rearrangements etc. It focuses on non-verbal reasoning as one would expect. In this test I scored in the top 1%, hence I am a member!

As the for venue I took my test in a school in Bristol, it was public but it varies from place to place. The tests I have described are the standard supervised Mensa exams but you can go to an get an independent certification (check the website for which tests are accepted) for entry too.

I love those kinds of tests. I can spend hours answering the comparison questions. That's my favorite of all, the comparison questions.

I am not a member of MENSA, just saw the part about the comparison questions and had to comment.

I like them too! I think the problem for me in the tests were that we had questions where you were given an extract of story with about 8 blank spaces and 5 choices for each space it was those I couldn't work out!

I always wanted to take the MENSA test but was always afrid that I would fail. I've known my IQ (156) since I was a little kid, Recently I took the WAIS test and scored at 99% (the psych wont tell you the exact results) and it prompted me to again look into MENSA. I found that they will accept a number of tests, WAIS included, as long as it is notarized, I think I'm going ahead with it but I always have problems getting my butt up and moving.

I have the IQ (132) but not the money.

Yes, I joined after taking the WISC-III when I was 15. They also accept the other common IQ tests, and things like the Miller Analogies test. I think they even take SAT scores as long as they are from the older test before they made it easier (I'm not positive though). There are a bunch of tests they will accept. I enjoy reading their publications, but I've never gone to a meeting or anything. I wouldn't even still be a member except my mom keeps her and my subscriptions up.

Okay, I found the page of accepted tests for American Mensa, if you're in the US.

It looks like the college prep tests are accepted if taken before '94 (earlier or later for some), and a bunch of neuropsych tests are also accepted. So you could pick a test which has more of a nonverbal focus. Although the cost of testing by a psychologist is probably a lot more than the Mensa testing fee, but if you've already had one of these tests, or you will be having neuropsych testing in the future, you can use those tests.

I never could make any sense of the idea of measuring human intelligence using a single variable.

If I'm buying a pair of jeans, I have to describe the size in two variables, one for the waist and one for the length.

So the size of a person's intelligence is less complex than the size of their jeans?

Everybody's crazy I think.

WISC-III ya that freaking anoying block test dont know why its there never got the last one even i can do others i mean what blocks has anything to do whith iQ?

We could measure the size of a persons trousers by a single number: Let x be the leg length, and y be the waist length. Define the size as s = (2^x)(3^y), then we have a unique number for every pair of trousers since numbers only have a single prime factorization. Numbers just indicate the structure

im 2 points off...d'oh!

It tests nonverbal and spatial reasoning skills.

I am only genius in certian areas and it is just memorised facts. I had an I.Q. test once at nine years old and it came back 70.4 or something. I'm not getting into MENSA anytime soon. I never found the idea of getting into it very appealing becuase I always assumed it was just another social club that consisted of doing social things. Not my sort of thing.