<p>I was just wondering, i mean technically speaking it is a club, and there are meetings all that fun stuff for it. Is it worth putting on an application? Or would it just look kind of pretentious? Most importantly, is it even considered an "award" in the eyes of an adcomm? Thanks ;p</p>
<p>If it is a formal club at your school and you are a member, I would include it as an extracurricular. I am not sure it is an “award” category in and of itself, unless you won some type of award associated with MENSA due to participation or competition. I think colleges like MIT, breed pretentious applications. I am not sure being a member of MENSA alone, would be pretentious enough for some Ivies. :)</p>
<p>Not if you’re just so,so. Seriously, what can it hurt? (Assuming your acheivements back up your IQ and demonstrate that you’re hard working). GL</p>
<p>As long as it’s important to you, put it on! Now, most MIT applicants probably have high IQs, so just being in MENSA probably won’t turn any heads, but if it’s important enough to you personally, go ahead! I bet an essay about that could be really good and could clarify that your membership is more than just a title.</p>
<p>alright thank you guys for the replies, I wasn’t sure how that would work out with that kind of thing… are there any MIT admission reps on CC? like MITChris ? if he could comment on this it would be greatly appreciated! No offense to other commenters, I just hear he’s reputable.</p>
<p>Chris is on leave from the admissions office this year to work on a graduate degree, so he hasn’t been around as much.</p>
<p>If MENSA is something that you consider important to you, and you put time and effort into it, you should put it on your application. But it’s an award in the same way that National Merit Semifinalist is an award – it’s great, but it’s something many MIT applicants could qualify for if they wanted.</p>
<p>I would be very hesitant to put MENSA on a college application because in (many) academic circles there is great stigma associated with MENSA and, I think, justifiably so. It is a group of self proclaimed smart people who join because they think they are smarter than everyone else. It would be better to invest your energy into actual achievements that make good use of your intellect. Why would you choose that particular club over others that focus on content areas (like literary clubs, STEM clubs, theatre, musical groups)? What does your choice of club tell others? I’d avoid fessing up to MENSA.</p>
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<p>I agree that there is a stigma against MENSA. It’s not terribly logical, considering people use their college degree in the same way, as proof of their intelligence.</p>
<p>Most people have to take an IQ test at some point of their life for placement purposes; this is the only qualifier for MENSA, so I don’t see what the big deal is. For what it’s worth, I heard about CTD/CTY through MENSA meetings when I was a kid, so it turned out to be extremely important.</p>
<p>If you do want to put it on your resume’, make sure you include what you did in it. It may help reduce the stigma.</p>
<p>Nope Mensa and taking an IQ test are not the same;Most people find out about CTY in ways other than Mensa. I am not saying that Mensa gives you nothing. I am saying that it is filled with people who desire to be in a club simply because they think it tells everyone else that they have a superior IQ. There are many clubs and activities filled with people as bright but who have chosen to join a club that has a purpose or mission-book/literary clubs, clubs focused on specific hobbies or charities, etc. Mensa has as its mission the accumulation of members who have taken some sort of IQ test and deemed themselves superior. But I say this primarily as a warning that my viewpoint is shared by many in academic circles, most of whom have PhDs but not Mensa memberships.</p>
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<p>People work for their college degrees. It’s a far better proof of intelligence then MENSA. (And I say this as someone MENSA-qualified :P)</p>
<p>Agree with PiperXP. MENSA have poor correlation with how well or successful one becomes in life. I would rather take a serious thinker who can contribute to society/company in some meaningful way than anyone who touts their MENSA score…similar to their SAT score.</p>
<p>Those who are brilliant “never” or “rarely” ever have to tout their intelligence. People around them just KNOW it. Moreover, they rarely brag about themselves and their accomplishments.</p>
<p>If you notice that those who are on Jeopardy or some quiz shows who can answer quickly some superfluous facts and information in general hold “not so meaningful jobs.” You might wonder why? Truly brilliant people like in the movie “Good Will Hunting” do not like to show off their knowledge because they tend to be introspective thinkers.</p>
<p>These are the people Harvard, MIT, Stanford, etc are looking for.</p>
<p>AFAIK we don’t have any sort of office stance on Mensa (which confirms, as mollie suggested, that it’s not something which differentiates applicants particularly in our pool). We don’t reward it or penalize it. It just doesn’t matter. </p>
<p>I think Insidelane is correct that putting Mensa on a resume can be seen as pretentious - and worse, pretentious without providing any additional value add, since it doesn’t mean anything more than being good at tests. My personal advice would be to not include it on resumes or applications. If you are that smart there will be plenty of more meaningful ways to distinguish your intelligence that don’t risk making you look like you’re grasping at straws.</p>
<p>An obvious exception is if participating in MENSA is particularly important to you. For example, if you were an officer of your MENSA chapter, and spent a large chunk of time planning and organising MENSA meetings. In that case, I would put it down, but I would also expect to be asked at the interview why MENSA was important to you. </p>
<p>I have interviewed many folks who felt themselves to be intellectually superior. This can actually be an issue in some cases. MIT accepts a very academically talented pool, and yet it does not take an expert in statistics to work our that fully half of these brilliant, talented people will be in the bottom half of their class. Those whose conception of their self-image is dependent on being smarter than everyone else around can struggle emotionally at MIT.</p>
<p>Everything Mikalye said is dead on as well.</p>