<p>Can membership in a high IQ society (such as Mensa or Triple Nine Society) help or hurt you in the college application process? Will adcoms be impressed with your membership or will they just think you are trying to inflate your list of activities?</p>
<p>Its useless most probably. And the Mensa IQ test i took was also the most worthless iq test ever designed :P</p>
<p>Your IQ should be evident from the your grades, test scores, et cetera. Although this leaves out those wonderful lazy geniuses we all know and love.</p>
<p>IQ means nothing. What you do is more important (in college admissions as well as in life.)</p>
<p>Virtually everyone who applies to a top college has a high IQ. Membership in such a society would probably be a negative because it would seem that you were more interested in your IQ than in pursuing academics, ECs and other things that more truly define who you are as a person, and what you'd have to offer the college.</p>
<p>Agree with Northstarmom</p>
<p>That's not fair. Some of these societies act as social clubs, a way for people to meet other people with like interests.</p>
<p>Agree with Northstarmom; if you use the membership to do something helpful for your community, it's a plus, but if you list the membership and nothing more, you've actually hurt your application. Some members of Minnesota Mensa do a lot to help the community, and they can list those activities directly.</p>
<p>Seriously man, see the MENSA iq test once. They dont even know how to make one. They test just ONE, yup, ONE type of intelligence in their tests, and thats pattern logic. Linguistics, mathematical, visuo-spatial all are discarded :S</p>
<p>[MODERATOR'S NOTE: </p>
<p>Read the College Confidential Terms of Service </p>
<p>to be reminded that personal insults are not permitted on College Confidential. ]</p>
<p>
[quote]
Yes, it's true that many people who apply to selective colleges are intelligent, but the majority of them are NOT intelligent enough to join Mensa
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It's a simple matter of arithmetic that Mensa (top 2 percent of the whole population, on any of a smorgasbord of tests) is much LESS selective than the most selective colleges (admitting much less than the top 1 percent of all college-bound high school graduates). Putting Mensa membership on a college application without more explanation of what you DID as a member of Mensa (which could be something quite meaningful) would just make your application look silly. </p>
<p>Even if you were a member of an group with scientifically validated procedures for selecting high-ability young people, such as the Davidson Young Scholars program </p>
<p>Programs</a> & Scholarships ~ Davidson Young Scholars Qualification Criteria </p>
<p>or the Study of Exceptional Talent, </p>
<p>The</a> Study of Exceptional Talent (SET) </p>
<p>it would still be silly to list membership in the group and nothing more on the college application. The members of those groups who get into the most competitive colleges DO SOMETHING with their brain power, and that is what they can mention on their applications.</p>
<p>"it would still be silly to list membership in the group and nothing more on the college application."</p>
<ul>
<li>Yes, but who does that? </li>
</ul>
<p>"much LESS selective than the most selective colleges (admitting much less than the top 1 percent of all college-bound high school graduates)."</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Harvard, the most selective school in the country (collegeboard.com),
accepts 9% of its applicants.</p>
<p>9%. 2%. hmmm.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Regarding IQ tests, the only thing they accurately measure is how good one is at taking IQ tests.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I'm sure all the high-IQ people here can distinguish which statement refers to a percentage of the whole national population.</p>
<p>No, tokenadult, I didn't know what you meant. </p>
<p>Who defines "the most selective colleges?" </p>
<p>One person might say that the Ivy League schools are the most selective. Others might claim that the most selective include Duke, Stanford, U.C. Berkeley, et cetera...</p>
<p>But you don't clarify. </p>
<p>I wouldn't be surprised if you just made that statistic up.</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>And on top of that (as if lying weren't enough), you make it sound as if ALL college-bound students in the country apply to "the most selective schools." But that simply isn't the case. Relatively few apply to selective schools (when compared to the vast majority that apply to lower tier state schools and community colleges).</p>
<p>Do you see how this might change the percentages a bit?</p>
<p>High IQ means absolutely nothing if you don't have the grades to back yourself up when applying to colleges.
The high ranked schools really don't want a 'smart' kid who doesn't have good work ethic.</p>
<p>But who said ihavenochance doesn't have good grades and a good work ethic?</p>
<p>Jesus...</p>
<p>Get ahead of yourself, much?</p>
<p>
[quote]
as if lying weren't enough
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I'll accept your apology for making that misleading statement, young man, once you've had time to think about your manners. Rather than guess about the mathematics of the matter, why not try looking up how many people take college admission tests each year </p>
<p><a href="http://www.act.org/news/data/07/pdf/National2007.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.act.org/news/data/07/pdf/National2007.pdf</a> </p>
<p>(but even at that that is less than all high school graduates each year) and how large the enrolled freshman class is at various colleges? </p>
<p>College</a> Search - California Institute of Technology - Caltech - At a Glance </p>
<p>College</a> Search - Princeton University - At a Glance </p>
<p>College</a> Search - Harvard College - At a Glance </p>
<p>College</a> Search - Yale University - At a Glance </p>
<p>Or take a look at some of the research on the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth </p>
<p>The</a> Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth: Home </p>
<p>to learn about a group of young people who are actually selected by a much more stringent standard than the one Mensa applies.</p>
<p>As my triple9 exH says, doing well on an IQ test proves you do well on IQ tests, nothing more. (He flunked out of college and has never, even with TurboTax, figured his taxes correctly, even when he used the 1040EZ form.)</p>
<p>High IQ doesn't mean anything to a college if you don't have the performance to back it up.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Get ahead of yourself, much?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You're the one getting ahead of yourself.
I never wrote (or even implied) that the op doesn't. I simply was stating something general.</p>