Becoming Malaysian Mensan

What is Mensa?
Mensa was founded in England in 1946 by Roland Berrill, a barrister, and Dr. Lance Ware, a scientist and lawyer. They had the idea of forming a society for bright people, the only qualification for membership of which was a high IQ. The original aims were, as they are today, to create a society that is non-political and free from all racial or religious distinctions. The society welcomes people from every walk of life whose IQ is in the top 2% of the population, with the objective of enjoying each other’s company and participating in a wide range of social and cultural activities. [Read more]

It was when the school teacher mentioned that my 2 years old son has the attitude of eager to learn thing and suggest try to bring him for an IQ test and see, may be can develop him better. After that I doing some search over the web for any nearby possible test for such a young age, and then come across Mensa. There’s a deja vu actually when saw this name cause few years back I seems to see it somewhere in the Facebook where don’t know which friend shared before.

But then there’s no test for young kids at the age of 3. At least have to be 14 years old and above. Found out that there’s test session in Penang the next day. Thinking maybe I can go for a try and see. After message and check with the person in charge who appear to be Mr Yeoh about whether still can accept such late registration or not. I then make payment which is RM 50 for the test and lucky to be able to sit it. The test venue is carry out at Masyarakat Penyayang in Penang, at only have 2 person including me when the test start at 10am. Suppose to have around 8 in total, but on the same day also Penang having Penang Bridge Marathon event, possible those from mainland having tough time to reach in time. After 40 minutes passed and submit up then just go home wait for the test. It was using an old booklet and having 36 questions to choose the objective answers, no wording just diagram.

Told that the result will be ready and mail in around 6-8 weeks time, however received the result from testing proctor after 3 days, surprisingly fast. The email will tell you how much is the score from the scale, that number is not your IQ score anyway, it just the scoring number and to know whether your result fall within how many percentile. If you got more than 98th percentile then you are entitle to become their member, which is RM 80 a year, lower rate if sign up for 2 years or more. Compare to other countries, Malaysia is one of the cheapest in the world.

After paid the membership, you will then added into their community which I still waiting to find out how fun it is. Hope that the members there are friendly and would like to let my son join such community more when he grown up big enough too.

If you would to ask me, become a member does it help make you smarter or get a better job if put it in your resume? I think I will answer these are not relevant. I think this Mensa society (where the members call themselves Mensan) are mean to create a gather-ground for like-minded people who like to solve puzzles (such as mechanical puzzle, logic puzzle, math puzzle, crytic puzzle, pattern puzzle, and more) and like critical thinking. They are not necessary genius but is just better at logical thinking and reasoning. Doesn’t mean non-Mensan are stupid people anyway. However, there’s possibility to include some self-aggrandized person in such community where they try to prove they are much superior than other. If happen to meet these small group of people showing how smart they were, I think can immediately know how low their intelligent level actually. Even if they pass the admission test with high mark, maybe they just have luck in guessing the answer.

Some people do ask, why need to pay to get IQ tested? Are you trying to proof you are smarter than other? Are you arrogant? And there are aplenty free test in the internet, why need to pay?
I would look at these question in a way that these are the group of people have yet to get to understand the purpose to get IQ tested. The reason for a proper test is to determine whether a person can be logically processing information compare to the other or not, and getting high IQ score doesn’t mean the person is smart, it just mean the person is at higher chance to be in the lower percentage count. As for the free online test, there are no guarantee whether the test and answer are accurately marked, will the calculation is accurate? No body can know whether it just simply give a number after few clicking.

If you would like to join the test, I would suggest can just sign up and go for the test, actually no need to do any preparation for the test, it just let you predict the next pattern anyway. No need purposely prepare it. And during the test, try to finish up the first 20 as fast as possible so that there are enough time to slowly think for the remaining more complex one. If the you have not get any solution or out of time, try not to guess the answer, else the result will not serve the purpose for you to undergo the testing.