In fiction, we always have super groups of gifted people. Right now, with the superheroes hype we are experiencing, we have fresh in our minds names like Avengers, Justice League, or X-Men as examples of such organizations that have as main goal to keep the peace and order in our world.
But what if we told you that there’s actually a real organization of gifted people that spreads around the whole world? Well, that’s the Mensa Club.
A Round Table For The Smart
In 1946, Australian barrister Roland Berrill and British scientist and lawyer, Dr. Lancelot Ware, founded Mensa at Lincoln College, in Oxford, England. Their aim was to form a society for the most intelligent people in the world, and the only qualification was to have a high IQ.
Mensa means “table” in Latin, but it also can mean “mind” or “month”, therefore Mensa was created as a round-table society for gifted minds to meet on a monthly basis.
Berrill and Ware had three well-defined goals for their organization: to identify and promote intelligence for benefit of mankind; to encourage research related to the nature, characteristics, and applications of intelligence; and to promote a social environment that encourages the intellectual activity of their members.
How Do I Get In?
via CIM
To become a Mensa member (or a Mensan, as they like to be called) you have to prove that you are smarter than 98% of the population. For this, you have to present your results in an approved intelligence test such as the Stanford-Binet or the Cattell Intelligence Scales.
In the Stanford-Binet the score must be 132 or higher, while in the Cattell Scale, you have to score 148 or higher, meaning that you actually belong to the top 2 percent of the population in terms of intelligence. American Mensa, on the other hand, have developed their own application test that does not provide a score that is comparable to other intelligence scores.
As of now, Mensa International consists of around 134,000 members from 100 different countries. These members are very diverse, with people as young as 13 years old and other members that have aged 103 years old. They publish members-only magazines and newsletters that include articles and columns written by members.
They also can form Special Interest Groups at international, national, and local levels that represent a wide variety of interests. American Mensa has also sponsored the annual Mensa Mind Games Competition since 1990, a contest in which the Mensa Select award is given to five board games that are “original, challenging and well designed”.