2632 Donna in AL's Question Answered

Saturday, October 24, 2009 (1:30 am)

Leave the stage while the audience is still clapping.

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A post or two back I offered to answer any question asked. I'm taking the easiest one first. Donna in AL asks, "As a member of mensa (you that is, not me), what is your IQ? If you have posted it before, I did not see it."

No, it hasn't been posted before.

What a lot of people don't know about Mensans is that they don't sit around comparing scores. In fact, it's a taboo topic. I know a few hundred past and current Mensans, and except for my late husband and my daughter, I have no idea whatsoever what anyone else's score is.

One reason comparing scores isn't done is that scores can't be compared. I'll explain that in a minute. Also, many Mensans don't even know what their own IQ score is.

Mensa accepts several tests for entrance (see http://www.us.mensa.org/Content/AML/NavigationMenu/Join/SubmitTestScores/QualifyingTestScores/QualifyingScores.htm for a list of acceptable tests and the qualifying scores. Note that many are not even IQ tests.) You can also take a battery of tests administered by Mensa. I'm not sure what it is now, but when I took the Mensa-administered tests in 1978 it was the California Test of Mental Maturity and the Stanford Binet.

If you took those tests through Mensa, they used to give you your score, so I know what my numbers are, but somewhere along the line, psychologists were complaining because Mensa was giving the same tests the pros gave, for hundreds of dollars less --- so Mensa agreed to NOT divulge the actual score. Now they just let you know whether you made it past the 98th %ile, qualifying for membership. Most current members of Mensa have no idea what they scored, except that it was high enough to join. It's only us old folks, or people who took a different test, who know our actual scores.

Note that Mensa does not require a particular IQ score. They actually require that you score in the top 2%ile (that's "percentile") of whatever test you take. Average scores are in the 50%ile range. A score in the 2%ile range means it's higher than 98% of all scores for that test.

What complicates matters is that around the 48-52%ile range (half the scores were above and half below the 50%ile point), all IQ tests will show generally the same IQ numbers - generally 90 to 110 IQ - for everybody who falls in that range. In that range, the test scores are comparable across all the tests. (That's what "standardized" means.) But as you spread out above or below that high bulge of the bell curve, the standard deviations of the different tests cause the scores to vary widely. For example, a 145 on the California Test of Mental Maturity is actually a higher score than a 158 on the Stanford Binet. But both of those scores fall at approximately the same point on the bell curve. Beyond a certain point, you can't compare the IQ numbers. You can compare only the %iles. To say, "I scored 162 on the IQ test!" has no meaning unless you know what test, what year, whether time was factored in (getting 162 completing the test in a half hour is a higher score than 162 in an hour on the same test), and how the test was administered. However it does have meaning to say "I scored in the 99th %ile.

The numbers also don't take into consideration that some people simply freak out at the mere idea of taking a test, so the actual score may not be the true potential score.

The second problem, one that many Mensans are loath to admit, is that the standardized IQ tests measure only a small subset of "intelligence", mainly the ability to discern patterns and think logically. They don't measure creativity, wholistic thinking, synthesis, deeper analysis, an ability to establish priorities and to change beliefs based on new information, and so on, all the things that are really! impressive. I get very impatient with Mensans who seem to assume that because they scored 132 on the Binet, they have been automatically endowed with all the other attributes and abilities, too.

Having established the groundwork, the disclaimer, the "yeah, are these numbers really going to mean anything?", I will now answer Donna's question in full.

• Mensa requires a score in the top 2%ile. I am a Life member of Mensa.
• Intertel requires a score in the top 1%ile. I am member of Intertel.
• My IQ test scores put me in the 99.8%ile. That means that in a group of 1,000 people taking an IQ or aptitude test, I am likely to have one of the two highest scores.
• My actual scores on professionally administered IQ tests have been 145, 158, 168, and something over 170. Of course, without my telling you what tests when, those numbers have no meaning, except that I can tell you that the 145 is technically higher than the 158. Suffice to say that they are all pretty darn high on the bell curve.
• I got 800/798 on my college boards.
• I aced the LSAT.
• I scored the highest in Pennsylvania on the 1961 engineering aptitude test, the one that gets you all kinds of scholarship offers from engineering schools. My score wasn't beaten until just a few years ago, when some guy aced the one question I blew. He was all over the newspapers. I wasn't, because I was female. In 1961 I was considered an anomaly. (Note that MIT didn't accept females back then, let alone offer one a scholarship.)
  
• In the mid to late '60s, IBM used to give an IQ test to potential employees. I scored the highest they'd ever seen, of about 10,000 tests given. They told me that, but didn't tell me my score.

So yeah, I guess some people would call me a genius. I don't, haven't, and won't, except in a disparaging way, because although I'll admit I must be pretty good at discerning patterns and thinking logically, that may be ALL I'm any good at. Otherwise, you'd think I'd be more successful. There's a lot more to genius than those paltry skills. And whatever those other things may be, I obviously don't have them.

Just look at all the things I don't understand.
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