Mensa

Mensa is the largest and oldest high IQ society in the world. It is a non-profit organization open to people who score at the 98th percentile or higher on a standardised, supervised IQ or other approved intelligence test. Mensa is formally composed of national groups and the umbrella organisation Mensa International, with a registered office in Caythorpe, Lincolnshire, England. Roland Berrill, an Australian barriester, and Dr Lancelot War, a British scientist and lawyer, founded Mensa at Lincoln College, in Oxford, England, in 1946. They had the idea of forming a society for very intelligent people, the only qualification for membership being a high IQ. It was to be non-political and free from all social distinctions (racial, religious, etc). Mensa's requirement for membership is a score at or above the 98th percentile on certain standardised IQ or other approved intelligence tests, such as the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales. The minimum accepted score on the Stanford-Binet is 132, while for the Cattell it is 148. Most IQ tests are designed to yield a mean score of 100 with a standard deviation of 15; the 98th-percentile score under these conditions is 130.82.