High-IQ society
A high-IQ society or genius society is an organization that limits its membership to people who have attained a specified score on an IQ test, usually in the top two percent of the population or above. The largest and oldest such society is Mensa International, which was founded by Roland Berrill and Lancelot Ware in 1946.
Entry requirements
High-IQ societies typically accept a variety of IQ tests for membership eligibility; these include WAIS, Stanford-Binet, and Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices, amongst many others deemed to sufficiently measure or correlate with intelligence. Tests deemed to insufficiently correlate with intelligence are not accepted for admission. As IQ significantly above 146 SD15 cannot be reliably measured with accuracy due to sub-test limitations and insufficient norming, IQ societies with cutoffs significantly higher than four-sigma should be considered dubious.All notable high-IQ societies agree in accepting only tests from traditional testing environments.
Demographics
People who choose to join high-IQ societies, especially those focused on highest levels, tend not to be as successful as expected according to conventional social standards. For example, in contrast to the general expectation that being intelligent correlates with financial success, they often have relatively low-paid jobs or have difficulty obtaining and maintaining steady employment. They may struggle to maintain intimate relationships. They are frequently lonely and feel like they are outsiders, and join for a sense of belonging. The skew towards many members having relatively low life success may be due to selection; that is, the over-representation of "lonely, frustrated, and socially awkward" people in high-IQ societies may be because happy, well-adjusted, middle-class people with high IQs do not seek out high-IQ societies, but the people who are not doing well do seek them out.Societies
Some societies accept the results of standardized tests taken elsewhere. Those are listed below by selectivity percentile. Mensa is by far the largest high-IQ society, but since the 1960s, various new groups have been founded with even stricter admissions requirements.Ultrahigh IQ groups are frequently short-lived organizations. Their internal disagreements often result in organizations splintering. For example, the International Society for Philosophical Enquiry, which was founded to out-do The MM Society. It then split to produce the Triple Nine Society, and then the Triple Nine Society split to produce the Cincinnatus Society. Ronald K. Hoeflin has founded or co-founded Ronald K. Hoeflin#Societies [Founded by Ronald Hoeflin|seven different high-IQ societies].
Notable high-IQ societies include:
| Name | Established | No. of members | Approx. no. of countries | Eligibility / Rarity | Approx. IQ |
| Mensa International | 1946 | ≈ 145,000 | 100 | Top 2 percent of population | 130 |
| Intertel | 1966 | ≥ 1,700 | 40 | Top 1 percent | 135 |
| Triple Nine Society | 1978 | ≈ 1,900 | 46 | Top 0.1 percent | 146 |