tctc33 wrote:
No - do not put it on there. I think most of the people in this thread are international, and I'm not sure how mensa is viewed in other countries, but in the US if someone sees mensa on an app they are going to think "smart, but no social skills," which is definitely not the message you want to send to b-school adcoms and potential employers. Here, employers will judge your intelligence (to the extent they want to) by (mainly) what schools you attended, (sometimes) your GPA, and (less often still) SAT/GMAT scores. B-schools will weigh GPA/GMAT more and schools attended less, but above some threshold additional GMAT points aren't a huge deal.
tl;dr - Putting mensa on your resume in the US will probably come off as a socially awkward move. Don't do it.
Its not that simple. To give a real life example: I sent out the exact same application for summer internships to the 30 biggest business law firms in my country. So far, I have gotten four interviews and eight rejections. All the interviews have been with some of the most prestigious and demanding law firms. Two of the interviews were with the two biggest firms, and the other two interviews were with two of the most demanding firms, in terms of skill and hours. In turn, I keep getting rejected by the smaller and not-so-great firms. And of course also by some other big and prestigous firms. Why is this? Well, different people make different judgements. And a lot of employers are interested in hiring people who they think are like them, and they identify with. I met a CEO who is interested in hiring people with bad grades, because she too had bad grades. And maybe that is why I only get responses top firms, because I have more in common with the people there than with the people in the lower tier firms. If you have a high IQ and put mensa, then emloyers who themselves are like that will be more interested in you, while employers who see themselves as not being that way will be less interested in you. And maybe that is a good thing?
And if you are intelligent enough to place in mensa, but still have the social skills, it will probably shine through in the rest of the application (lots of social activities etc., and the way your cover letter is written or whatever). Social skills and high iq are not mutually exclusive, and anyone to think so is perhaps themselves lacking some basic knowledge about people.