Does MENSA membership add weight to profile??

Question

Hi fellow Forum members,

Any advice on this subject please ?
Does being a MENSA member add points to your MBA Application/Profile ?

Thanks

ThomasD · Answer

Well, I do not have an 'official' adcom answer for you. But to me I'd would say: Ok the guy is smart, but unless in your essays you show that you are seriously involved with some of the things your local Mensa group does and further demonstrate that you use your smarts to accomplish something on the job, I would deem it worthless information. Sorry for being so harsh, but you just need to connect this to the rest of your application, by itself it does not say much about your prospects at a certain school and the professional life thereafter. But you are smart, you know all that right ;-)

chauhan2011 · Answer

Very well said, unless it reflects on the prospect of me being a better candidate; it doesn't carry much weight.

I think I have an average profile and just want to make sure i consider what i have at my disposal to make my profile stronger.

run4run · Answer

anyone who gets a 750 on the gmat or above auto qualifies for mensa. Probably over 20% of applicants at top tier schools can be mensa members. I don't really see that being such a big differentiator.

Happytrojan · Answer

Yeah, I suppose unless you scored below the 95 percentile on the GMAT, the mensa membership might not add much. Personally, I do not think it can hurt you in any way. I am, however, considering my GMAT score to gain membership to mensa and then put that on my resume just to highlight to employers that I am intelligent. Supposedly, IQ is a very good predictor of success on the job (P&G use IQ tests in their hiring process for example), and I would expect most HR people to be aware of that. So by putting mensa membership on my resume I would hope to be able to signal just that (few people here understand what the GMAT is, but most know mensa).

Yekrut · Answer

Wow this is something I had never thought of. Interesting to suggest putting your IQ on a CV.

AbhiJ · Answer

Dude you are applying for MBA not PhD or Quantitative Masters. I am pretty sure most of the CEOs would perfrom worse on the IQ test than most of the fresh undergrad engineers/programmers.

Happytrojan · Answer

The GMAT measures more or less the same thing, which is why Mensa grants membership to anyone who scores in the 95th percentile of the GMAT. So IQ scores are hardly superflous, but actually redundant.

Latinapp · Answer

I don't think GMAT measure the same as MENSA. I have taken several IQ test, including the most common (Raven, Weschler), supervised by professionals and scored within 136 - 140 range which is above the 98 percentile, and still I can´t improve my 40 points in quant. Is true, I haven't dedicate enough time, but it is a so boring test.
I believe that GMAT don't measure your IQ, but your will to achieve goals. If adcoms just wanted your potential (G intelligence), you' would have to take only Raven Matrices Test. You don't need to know anything. It's pure intelligence. 
Don't even bother on putting your MENSA membership in your application. They just don't care about it.

Happytrojan · Answer

I took a professionally administered IQ test and scored in the 97th percentile. I think it essentially measures the same thing as the GMAT: your ability to think logically.

Latinapp · Answer

I'll put you this way:

How much time did you take preparing for your IQ test?
How much time did you take preparing for GMAT?

Happytrojan · Answer

The first time I took an official GMAT-prep exam, without any preparation, I scored a 710. That is the 92nd percentile. And since the GMAT selection group is much more restrictive than the IQ-population, with a 95th perncetile GMAT being the equivalent of a 98th percentile then being in the 92nd percentile on the GMAT can safely be said to be the equivalent of the 93-95th percentile in IQ.

Now, I did prepare somewhat for the IQ test, so if we lower my score from the 97th percentile to only 94-95th percentile, saying that the preparation gave me a slight advantage, there is only a few percent difference between them, if any at all.

But I do not hold this for the entire truth, or a complete explanation (nor will I ever consider discussing such a thing); but if you want to take preparation and such into account, they are eerily close to each other in result, in my case.

tctc33 · Answer

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.

tl;dr - Putting mensa on your resume in the US will probably come off as a socially awkward move. Don't do it.

Happytrojan · Answer

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.

Latinapp · Answer

Ok, IMHO adcoms want to minimize the asymmetry of information between you and them. They want to know all "relevant" about you to make a decision. If you have a good GMAT and GPA, there is no need to show more muscles, unless this muscle has made something relevant that support another personal feature, and I mean soft skill. E.g: I know MENSA sometimes meet their members to "solve" world problems. If you went to some of their meetings and proposed some kind of a project that helped to start blah blah blah.........then you MUST present your membership. In other case, if you are just a member......, remember that adcoms like humility, so you could keep this card till the right moment: The Interview.
Regards

tctc33 · Answer

This isn't about the intersection of social skills and high iq, or even the intersection of social skills and mensa membership. It's about the intersection of social skills and putting mensa on your resume, with the result being nullset. If you put mensa on your resume, you'll come off as a complete tool - ignore this advice at your own peril.

95th percentile on the GMAT, which is a 720, qualifies you for mensa. Since 720 is close to the median score for top 10 schools, about half of the students at those schools qualify. I guarantee you almost none have mensa listed on their resumes. Many probably do have their actual GMAT score listed. That's a socially acceptable way to signal your intelligence. Listing mensa membership is not.

askFWC · Answer

This surely is an additional thing to make your profile look impressive. However the quality of your work, your academics and beyond academics will play most important role in your mba candidature.

MBAbot · Answer

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Does MENSA membership add weight to profile??

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