GMAT Percentiles

Technically, an IQ is a static number, it shouldn't be something that can increase/decrease.

Mensa's meant to be a group/forum where smart people can discuss various matters among their intellectual peers. As for exclusivity, there are about 134 million people worldwide eligible to join (6.7 billion population x top 2%). Doesn't seem all that exclusive. And with membership of only about 100,000 (according to Wikipedia), it doesn't even seem that appealing to its target popluation (0.07% of those eligible actually belong to the group).

It makes them test you. If my goal is to get the job from that interview, then I wouldn't expose myself to areas where they can destroy me with their questioning.

My experience: I went through tons of interviews with major ibanks and there are several things which I took off my resume because almost every interviewer tried to come up with something extra hard to get me to sweat. In finance, you will get hard questions regardless of what is on your resume, but certain buzz words can get you into a mess that you didn't want to be in.

Speaking of 'Top X %' percentiles, this was bugging me for a while, and I finally ran the numbers. Seemingly every day I am seeing another 'member profile' in the no discussions thread with another high 700s score. (Which is awesome for the person of course, but got me wondering as to really how rare a 700+ score was) In fact, here's the breakdown for that thread in total(I didn't count people who only listed a practice score):

page 5, 17 / 18 700+
page 4, 15 / 17 700+
page 3, 17 / 18 700+
page 2, 15 / 20 700+
page 1, 15 / 16 700+

in total, 79 out of 89 (88.7%). In sum, essentially 90% of those GMAT clubbers are scoring in the highest 10% of GMAT test takers. Does this make sense to people? Im aware that:

1) People are only listing their highest score, and ones percentile is only out of every GMAT test taken.
2) Obviously someone with a high GMAT score is more likely to flaunt it than one without, even with relative anonymity.

But still, I'd be very curious to what the percentiles are of the various scores, compared against each test-takers highest score rather than just every test. After all that's what you're competing against for your apps. I'd suspect that 700, while in the 90% percentile for every GMAT exam, is much lower than that (maybe even 75-80%) for an applicant's highest score, because so many people take the '700+ or bust+' philosophy when studying / deciding whether to retake their GMAT.

134 million out of 6.7 billion only appears to be non-exclusive because it is hard to grasp 6.7 billion people. I like your analysis of 0.07% of the eligible population are members. Certainly doesn't seem that many people really want to get into it. Maybe it's the membership fees for some, and the fact that many others that are that smart think it's stupid to have to pay a group to tell you something already knew before you joined their group otherwise you wouldn't have known you were eligible to join their group.

Also in my view Mensa is a type of organization that is well-intended, but outdated. When it was founded (post WW2), there was no internet, no newsgroups, the only real formal areas for intellectual discussions belonged to universities. The intention of Mensa was to reach out to various intellectuals whose social circles only consisted of their family, friends, and co-workers and provide a medium for easier introductions/discussions between those types of people. So if I encounter someone say age 35 or older that talks of their Mensa membership, I can understand the pride / reasoning behind it. But if you're my age, you pretty much just come off as a tool as always just my $0.02

I think that's a great point. One benefit of GMATClub (and other attempts at forums like it) is basically what Mensa was decades ago. When we stop to think about how much the internet has changed our lives, it's kind of scary actually.

Yes, and it is not on my resume

GMATClub is very self-selecting. Check out last years Ross thread. I think 67% of R1 applicants got accepted. I think Ross' overall acceptance rate is ~20%.

That being said, when GMAC says that the average GMAT score is 550, I assume that's across all tests taken, not the highest score of each individual who has taken the test.

It would be interesting to see what the average GMAT score was if you only counted each person's highest score.

RF