British Mensa IQ test upper limit

[Jonathan Scott]

Back in 1988, after moving to a new area, I thought I'd take a British Mensa IQ test to find out my IQ and then perhaps be able to get in touch with intelligent people. On both the practice test and the supervised test Mensa said that my Cattell-scale IQ was 161 (equivalent to about 141 on Stanford-Binet and corresponding to the top 0.5%), so I was in. I was a bit disappointed to find it wasn't any higher given some less formal results and rumours from my youth, but on the other hand 1 in 200 meant it might be easier than I had previously feared to find similarly intelligent people. I went to a few meetings and activities, but never seemed to find any really shared interests, and later met more interesting people through music (including the person who is now my wife). So much for Mensa.

Anyway I only just discovered today from British Mensa's own website that 161 is the maximum Cattell IQ which British Mensa actually quotes as a result for the adult test, in that any raw scores for that particular test above that level are assumed to be insufficiently reliable to assign a specific IQ. I never heard anything about this before.

So that means that back in 1988 when they told me my IQ, what they should really have told me is that my IQ was greater than or equal to that value and that if wanted to know it more accurately I'd need to find some other test. So I've been under the illusion for 20 years that they had measured my IQ but in fact they'd set only a lower limit on it. That really makes me feel stupid!

Anyway, I'm sure it's too late to do anything about it now. With the frustration and stress of my current job, as well as far too frequent headaches, I barely have the intelligence to work out the surface volume of a 4-dimensional black hole, let alone how to operate the timer on my cooker.

So if you take an IQ test, make sure that your precise numeric result isn't just an "off-scale" reading.

And can anyone here actually recommend any higher-IQ associations (I guess I qualify for 99.5% percentile), or are they all based on the fallacy that being intelligent is somehow a shared interest?

 

[Evo]

Why do you even care?

I only know my IQ score because at the age of eleven my teacher insisted that I have my IQ tested, I would never have actually sought to know because a number isn't going to make me more or less intelligent, it certainly isn't going to impart any knowledge or expertise.

I already knew I was smarter than everyone else, I didn't need a test to affirm it. :tongue:

And yes, my score is much higher than yours. muwahaha I guess that makes me proof that an extremely high IQ doesn't mean much.

 

[Jonathan Scott]

Why do you even care?

I only know my IQ score because at the age of eleven my teacher insisted that I have my IQ tested, I would never have actually sought to know because a number isn't going to make me more or less intelligent, it certainly isn't going to impart any knowledge or expertise.

I already knew I was smarter than everyone else, I didn't need a test to affirm it. :tongue:

And yes, my score is much higher than yours. muwahaha I guess that makes me proof that an extremely high IQ doesn't mean much.

I cared mainly about the difficulty of finding people smarter than me when I wanted to understand more about the universe. So far, PF is the only place I've seen any suggestion that they actually exist (but they are probably mostly too intelligent to reveal their existence to me). At the time I took the test, I also wanted to know the chances of finding people who could at least keep up with me.

And, yes, it would be fun to be able to compare, but since I now realize I only know a lower limit to my adult IQ (and that only 20 years ago), I can't play that game.

(Well, I can try. I know that at 11 my "reasoning quotient" was much higher, but no-one would tell me what it was. I think from hints that it was in the low 170s. I was subjected to various other tests, but no-one would tell me the results, except for one where I was simply told I was "off scale" but so were several other people in my year at Winchester College).

 

[Werg22]

Do you expect to be taken seriously? You want to meet smarter people so they can teach you more about the universe? In high IQ societies nonetheless? The people that understand the most about the universe don't waste their time in those ridiculous high IQ societies, let alone bother with a meaningless number.

With the frustration and stress of my current job, as well as far too frequent headaches, I barely have the intelligence to work out the surface volume of a 4-dimensional black hole, let alone how to operate the timer on my cooker.

Oh wait, my bad, you really are ridiculous.

 

[Oerg]

why would you want to know more about the universe from people with high IQ?? In my opinion, you really are looking in the wrong direction. I share the same sentiments as Werg22.

 

[gravenewworld]

Stop being a pompous jerk. You might have a high IQ, but apparently you scored a 0 on the common sense test.

 

[Ben Niehoff]

A surefire way to avoid making friends is to wander around assuming you are better than everyone else.

Edited to add: It seems to me that you want to meet interesting people; not necessarily people with high IQs. If you work in science, there are probably plenty of interesting people around, with whom you could have engaging discussions. If you're a loner, then it might be hard to come up with things that you like to do that you can actually share with someone...sitting around working out equations for black holes is not generally a social activity. Try something like hiking, dancing, or music (as you've done already). Invite people over to your house, and try your hand at keeping them entertained...it could be a new challenge for you. Overall, try focusing on how awesome and interesting other people are, rather than trying to evaluate whether they are worthy of your friendship.

 

[Jonathan Scott]

Don't worry; I learned some better priorities long ago (nearly all of those 20 years). I gave up on high IQ stuff and Mensa in particular long ago, and resumed my interested in playing classical music instead. Now I've just come home from performing a very enjoyable classical musical concert of piano trios with my wife (who plays the cello) and a local professor of physics who is also an excellent pianist.

I've never had problems making general friends, so that comment wasn't relevant, but I do have difficulty finding ones who can discuss my scientific interests.

When I started this thread earlier today, I was just very grumpy at having been misled by Mensa all those years ago. I was very isolated at the time, and the idea that 1 in 200 (or to put it another way, 1 in 4 Mensa members) should be at least equally intelligent had seemed quite a relief, as that seemed like a lot of people. (I've subsequently remembered that since I got the top place in the "eleven plus" exam in Hampshire in 1967, that was probably more like 1 in well over 10,000 at the time, so I should have suspected that the 1 in 200 was too good to be true).

Apart from classical music, my other main hobby all my life has been physics, but as I work in computer programming I have only rarely had bright people around with some knowledge of physics so that we could discuss the nature of the universe. There was one person at my computing job in the early 1990s who seemed like a genius to me and helped me understand some aspects of General Relativity, but he died in a car accident.

If you have university or academic connections, or work in some area of science, it's obviously easier to use those contacts to discuss physics, but in the position I was in at the time, it seemed statistically easier to meet bright people and see if any of them were interested in physics (or classical music, for that matter). I also now realize that the people I met through Mensa were probably no brighter than many of those I met through my job or through my university courses, and mostly somewhat more weird (as others might also have said about me at the time). I'm a bit curious to know if anyone here had any better experience with other higher IQ societies, but as I mentioned with my Mensa score I would only have been eligible for slightly higher ones anyway.

 

[WarPhalange]

Hey guys I have an IQ of 500, why is everybody around me so stupid? :(

I'm looking for non-stupid people to be friends with. Do you guys know any?

 

[OmCheeto]

And can anyone here actually recommend any higher-IQ associations (I guess I qualify for 99.5% percentile), or are they all based on the fallacy that being intelligent is somehow a shared interest?

Google: Prometheus Society

entry level is 1 in 30,000

I should point out that I've never belonged to that or any other high IQ society.

I like to surround myself with brilliant and imbecile alike. Makes for a more colorful life. Although people who are below the 1 in 30,000 stupidest people annoy me a bit.
It's almost impossible to steer them away from conversations which consist of either slow unexplained laughing or the intricacies of their wonderful new trailer hitches.

 

[turbo]

I have known a few MENSA members, and I'll stick with Groucho's philosophy - I wouldn't want to join any club that would have me as a member. In years of playing music (especially blues), I have become close to truck-drivers, appliance service-people, landscapers, loggers, etc, that may not have huge IQs, but are a lot smarter than a lot of "intelligent" people.

Disclaimer: I was tested early and often because in the early days of the cold war kids with scientific aptitude were groomed for engineering, tech, and applied sciences. I quit engineering school after my first year because I loved English Lit, Philosophy, and other Liberal Arts courses that we never got sufficient exposure to in our rural JHS/HS. BTW, a girl in my graduating class and I both scored 99.5+% on our SAT's despite attending a HS in which there was NO calculus class offered. We worked our tails off.

 

[ice109]

who cares. really at this point in my life social maturity is much more important to me than iq. i can stand someone who is dumber than me but i absolutely cannot stand someone who is socially inept.

 

[Jonathan Scott]

I have known a few MENSA members, and I'll stick with Groucho's philosophy - I wouldn't want to join any club that would have me as a member

Yes, I understand his point. As Mensa members are less than 1 in 50 of those eligible, Mensa members are more strongly selected by their choice to join than by their eligibility, and those who actually participate in activities are a much smaller subset again. I've met several bright people through music, computing or science activities who turned out to be members of Mensa, but I met very few people through Mensa activities who shared my interests in music, computing or science, presumably because those people had better things to do.

I'm not interested in actually joining any higher IQ society now, but I've been curious to know whether having a higher IQ threshold than Mensa might have actually led to a society which was more useful to its members.

I'm sure I'm less intelligent than I used to be anyway. Once or twice a year, I get some time over a few days to think about physics and I write extensive notes on what I manage to sort out, but in recent years, the next time I go back to them it often takes me longer to understand what they mean than it took to write them in the first place.

 

[runner]

I've been looking for a test that measures a person's ego. Does one exist?

 

[Chi Meson]

Stop being a pompous jerk. You might have a high IQ, but apparently you scored a 0 on the common sense test.

The tactful test is another good one to try.

To the OP:
We have had a number of Mensa threads over the past few years. There are several folks here who have been members in the past (myself for one), and several others who could have joined, but saw no reason, and others who know people that are members.

If you like Scrabble, then maybe it's worth joining, but other than that there is very little reason to be a member. As far as intelligent online conversation (that's what I was looking for) the Mensa chat areas (a Compuserve forum and a listserve) paled in comparison to right here in PF.

The listserve, especially, was dominated by hugely arrogant "more mensa than you" personalities. The Compuserve forum was OK, but even there I was not impressed. Evidently many mensans believe their high IQ means they are right. And although few I encountered had any scientific background, they felt that their personal theories of the universe has equal merit with those of Einstein, etc. About the twelfth time I heard "but that's only a theory!" I had to leave. I couldn't abide it, not worth it.

Everything you need is right here.

 

[Jonathan Scott]

Everything you need is right here.

Thanks - that seems to be true.

Now if only I could find a way to filter out the stuff I don't need, then life would be perfect.

 

[OmCheeto]

Thanks - that seems to be true.

Now if only I could find a way to filter out the stuff I don't need, then life would be perfect.

Argh. The voices. Please make them stop...

Mama always said, life was just like a big doo-doo/chocolate filter.
You spend your whole life pickin through the turds to find the good stuff.
After a while, you get pretty good at it.
You don't even have to bite into one cause you just know it's a load o' crap.
That's what she said.

 

[brewnog]

What an idiot. No offence like.

 

[wolram]

My IQ went around the clock and stopped at 90.

 

[Chi Meson]

My IQ went around the clock and stopped at 90.

90°? As in π/2?

 

[wolram]

90°? As in π/2?

As in i have less dust in my space.

 

[Mk]

Stop being a pompous jerk. You might have a high IQ, but apparently you scored a 0 on the common sense test.

you really are ridiculous.

Hey guys I have an IQ of 500, why is everybody around me so stupid? :(

I'm looking for non-stupid people to be friends with. Do you guys know any?

What an idiot. No offence like.

I've been looking for a test that measures a person's ego. Does one exist?

Jonathan Scott has seemed both gracious and calm, there is no need to shift into "jerk mode." What's your problem?

who cares. really at this point in my life social maturity is much more important to me than iq. i can stand someone who is dumber than me but i absolutely cannot stand someone who is socially inept.

Social maturity is probably extremely low on my list. I have friends with Asperger's syndrome and "nerds" are pretty much defined as being intelligent and/or socially inept because of it.

 

[Kurdt]

I must say I fail to see why people get so hostile over IQ discussions. Sure, point out the actual intent of IQ rating but there is no need to get nasty.

 

[gravenewworld]

I'm a multi multi millionaire.


Does anyone know where I can find a place where other filthy rich people hang out? I want to know how I can make even more money. Most people I meet don't have as much money as me and therefore I have a hard time meeting people that spend as much money as I do on things.

 

[turbo]

I must say I fail to see why people get so hostile over IQ discussions. Sure, point out the actual intent of IQ rating but there is no need to get nasty.

Really! Measuring one's IQ gives a rough measure of potential, but it does not tell you what the subject can/will do with that potential. There are all kinds of personal attributes over which an individual has no control, except how to make the best of them. If someone is 7' tall, does that make him or her a pro basketball player? Nope. Hard work, lots of drills, and a lucky convergence of fitness, reflexes, and "touch" are the only way a very tall person can leverage that height advantage into a career in the NBA. Apart from that, their primary "advantage" might be the ability to retrieve objects from high shelves.

IQ is not all that different. If you have superior pattern-recognition skills, you may do VERY well on a variety of IQ tests, but if you don't have more good sense than god gave a duck, you won't be able to leverage those skills into anything relevant to high performance in real-world situations. I have known some very intelligent people who were not very smart, and shot themselves in the foot over and over again.

 

[OmCheeto]

J.S. You have just failed to enter the one in a million club...

This has been an IQ test.

We sent you a subliminal message last week telling you to initiate this thread.

You passed the first test by actually finding your way back.

But we regret to inform you that you have failed the rest of the test with your inability to respond properly to the barrage of computer simulated, 3 year old mentality, you are a big poo-poo head, attacks.

We cordially invite you back next year for another try.

If you would like sooner humiliation, please donate and become a gold member, and we will reconsider your application, in the aforementioned, 1 in a million club.

Thank you.

Cheet

ps. The answer to the first question: Why do you even care?
was; Shut up!

 

[Proton Soup]

i have this theory that IQ measures are selected by autistics, and therefore are a measure of ones autisticity. that people must take exams to find each other is evidence of this.

 

[Jonathan Scott]

J.S. You have just failed to enter the one in a million club...

This has been an IQ test.

...

:rofl: Good one!

 

[Jonathan Scott]

I'm a multi multi millionaire.

Does anyone know where I can find a place where other filthy rich people hang out? I want to know how I can make even more money. Most people I meet don't have as much money as me and therefore I have a hard time meeting people that spend as much money as I do on things.

This joke nicely illustrates a surprisingly common view that intelligence is somehow an unfair advantage, to be envied and resented. One of the few compelling reasons to associate more with intelligent people is to escape that prejudice.

In some ways, intelligence can actually be an unfair disadvantage, as I'm sure most intelligent people are already aware. For example, I find my intelligence means that people have disproportionately higher expectations of me, even in situations where intelligence isn't an advantage. It also means that I can find fewer people who can help me when things get difficult, or who can even appreciate the difficulty of the problems I'm trying to solve.

 

[Art]

This thread reminds me of this old song

'Oh Lord it's hard to be humble
when you're perfect in every way.'

http://www.asklyrics.com/display/Mac_Davis/Oh_Lord_It%60s_Hard_To_Be_Humble_Lyrics/73493.htm

Perhaps I do the OP an injustice but it leaves me with the strong impression that the only reason this thread was created was to blow one's own trumpet. I have defended MENSA in the past but I can see how some folk might develop an allergy to it's members based on what I believe to be a self-aggrandizing minority view held by some of it's members.

btw Someone who sits an IQ test without knowing or understanding the test parameters doesn't strike me as being particularly bright. To say it wasn't explained to them is hardly an excuse as curiosity is the driver of intelligence. Your complaint about the lack of shared interests between you and other Mensans demonstrates another gap in your knowledge re MENSA. I suggest you check out their SIGs, that is Special Interest Groups (just so you don't one day complain no-one told you what a SIG was )

 

[Jonathan Scott]

Perhaps I do the OP an injustice but it leaves me with the strong impression that the only reason this thread was created was to blow one's own trumpet. I have defended MENSA in the past but I can see how some folk might develop an allergy to it's members based on what I believe to be a self-aggrandizing minority view held by some of it's members.

I started the thread because I was very upset about discovering that when Mensa (or whoever they get to do it) had assessed my IQ 20 years ago, they quoted a number without warning that this was only a catch-all "OK" value, and I had believed it. I can assure you there was nothing in the small print at the time (20 years ago) which suggested this, as I was particular interested at the time (for reasons which were probably somewhat naive) in determining the chances of finding people with similar intelligence. I only discovered this limit a couple of days ago, when looking around on the British Mensa web site.

I must admit that I chose PF forums to vent my feelings because I was assuming to some extent that the intelligence of PF readers would be high, and many (certainly most studying theoretical physics) would be more intelligent that the top 0.5% percentile where my Mensa score had placed me, so the implication that I think I'm "intelligent" wouldn't be an issue.

I felt that Mensa had misled me into thinking that I was less bright than I was, which affected to some extent the way I subsequently led my life, lowering my expectations of myself yet making me puzzled that it was so difficult to find others of similar intelligence. For example, I thought at the time "In that case, I guess I probably wouldn't have been bright enough to study theoretical physics at university anyway" and nearly gave up on it, but later I took a degree through the Open University consisting entirely of Physics and Maths courses and got first class honours.

Your complaint about the lack of shared interests between you and other Mensans demonstrates another gap in your knowledge re MENSA. I suggest you check out their SIGs, that is Special Interest Groups (just so you don't one day complain no-one told you what a SIG was )

Mensa is basically a social club for people who typically have a good university level education (at least back in the days when you had to be bright to go to university). There are plenty of good and interesting people there, but they are not very densely concentrated outside major population centres, and just being bright enough to do well at university isn't really a particularly strong shared interest.

I've been a member of the Space and Physics SIGs since I joined Mensa, and tried to participate actively for a while (for example defending SR against a supporter of "Autodynamics"), but I was already having better discussions on the Usenet science newsgroups at the time (before they became so overrun with rubbish as to become unusable by anyone who had a day job). I also participated in some local Mensa music activities, but found much better musical contacts elsewhere (which turned out to include some Mensa members and scientists).

(I'm still a paid-up member and still get the Mensa magazine, and my wife considers it amusing that almost every month the puzzles page or its answers column contains at least one silly error bad enough to invalidate the question or the answer).

 

[OmCheeto]

Please take the following IQ test: http://www.iqtest.dk/main.swf
and get back to us with the results.

I won't be back until around 3 minutes after 6 this evening, pacific standard time, so please take your time.

 

[Jonathan Scott]

Please take the following IQ test: http://www.iqtest.dk/main.swf
and get back to us with the results.

I won't be back until around 3 minutes after 6 this evening, pacific standard time, so please take your time.

Thanks for what I'll take as a constructive suggestion, despite the frivolity. The site looks interesting and I may try it some time when I feel up to it (which could take at least a few days as I'm in one of my frequent headache phases). Provided that it's a serious site (which it appears to be), then if I try the test I'll post my result, regardless of how embarrassed I am about it.

Of course, unless it has one of those handy time-warp features, I still won't know what my IQ really was 20 years ago, before IBM claimed my body and soul.

 

[khemix]

And can anyone here actually recommend any higher-IQ associations (I guess I qualify for 99.5% percentile), or are they all based on the fallacy that being intelligent is somehow a shared interest?

Sorry, not to be rude or anything, but your entire post reaks of you bragging about your supposed superior intellect. If you are as smart as you claim, you should be skeptical enough to know what a poor indicator of intelligence iq really is. You've already been met with hostility due to you showing off, so I'll spare you that. You are looking for people who can keep up with you? I really find that hard to believe... but if you say so, there are several higher iq societies (check wiki, high iq societies) that have steeper requirements than Mensa. I'm sure they have membership fees as well.

I wonder if its possible to get your number or something, to see how 'hard' it really is to keep up with you. I believe my iq was something at 120 when I did it in elementary. So I should be easy pickings for you, no? Otherwise, I find this sort of comical.

 

[Jonathan Scott]

Sorry, not to be rude or anything, but your entire post reaks of you bragging about your supposed superior intellect. If you are as smart as you claim, you should be skeptical enough to know what a poor indicator of intelligence iq really is. You've already been met with hostility due to you showing off, so I'll spare you that. You are looking for people who can keep up with you? I really find that hard to believe... but if you say so, there are several higher iq societies (check wiki, high iq societies) that have steeper requirements than Mensa. I'm sure they have membership fees as well.

I wonder if its possible to get your number or something, to see how 'hard' it really is to keep up with you. I believe my iq was something at 120 when I did it in elementary. So I should be easy pickings for you, no? Otherwise, I find this sort of comical.

If you check back through the rest of the thread, I think you'll find that your points have already been answered.