Alef: The NEXT Conversation

An Issue of Pride

By Rebecca Halpin

Mensa defines genius (or eligibility for membership) as ranking in the top 2% of the population on the IQ test. I most certainly do not consider myself a genius; until 7th grade, I thought Toronto was in Mexico. No doubt, schooling was always important to my family. Good grades were always rewarded with a trip to our restaurant of choice; in my family, all the kids always chose the very traif raw oysters at Pappas Seafood as our reward, that is, until raw shellfish from the Gulf of Mexico were deemed inedible by the FDA.

My parents stressed leadership, which I found in BBYO and NFTY; responsibility, which I found in babysitting and as a camp counselor; as well as any other traits a “good Jewish girl” should have.

Intelligence was no exception. Poor grades and test scores didn’t just disappoint my parents, but me as well. I needed to succeed academically, it was a part of my heritage. At my sister’s high school – which was affectionately nicknamed “Hebrew High” – if you weren’t Jewish or Asian, you didn’t have a chance of getting into the top ten percent. I wanted to be recognized for my hard work.

It wasn’t until years later, after college, when I stopped reading books because they were required and started reading for my own enjoyment, that the thought crossed my mind about joining Mensa. I had heard of it, but nobody I knew was a member. Having thoroughly enjoyed comedian Steve Martin’s first novella, Shopgirl, I soon followed it up with his The Pleasure of My Company, a very funny novel about a highly-neurotic man who takes the Mensa entrance exam only to find out that he has a 2-digit IQ. (Interestingly, the Mensa test doesn’t actually give you your IQ score; it only identifies if you fall into the top 2%). Having spent his whole life convinced he was among the intellectually-elite, he finds himself at the start of a paradigm shift of epic proportions.

I won’t give away the ending, but the idea crossed my mind that I might be interested in taking the admittance IQ test just to see if I could pass. I had always been an excellent test taker. In fact, I was a better tester than I was a student. Growing up, my mother, who was an Educational Diagnostician, used to try out her new tests on me and my siblings. They were easy by comparison to the yearly achievement tests we took at school, and were used to diagnose things like dyslexia, which none of us had. I had done well enough on my PSATs to earn a National Merit Scholarship and had SAT scores that put me at the top of the list to be a tutor.

So I went to the Mensa website, requested to be e-mailed the at-home practice test, and found a cozy little spot to sit down and take my test. I didn’t try terribly hard, but I did the best I could and mailed it off to the organization. Weeks went by without a reply, but it didn’t faze me. It’s not like I expected to get in. Finally, a shiny Mensa-logoed envelope arrived containing a page informing me that my score indicated that I had a great chance of passing the actual test. I signed up for a test date, and a few weeks later, I was sitting in a classroom at Columbia University with a dozen or so other applicants. They weren’t at all what I expected – they were skater guys, ad execs, and artists; there wasn’t a pocket protector to be found.

The proctor told us that by nature of the self-selection process, about 80% of applicants get in to Mensa, giving us a nice little boost before the 3-hour test began. I felt confident when it ended, but I had no idea if I would get in.

It was still a shock when I did! To this day, I still believe that luck played a major factor; the oral/memory section was about Greek theater, a topic I was quite familiar with as a Theater/English double major in college.

Regardless of the reason, I am now a card-carrying member of Mensa. I am reluctant to add “proud” to the previous statement. It’s a topic of frequent debate on the Mensa listserves – will listing my membership on my resume seem snobbish? I wouldn’t list my membership in any other club, so, for the most part, I keep it under wraps. In the meantime, I still make many mistakes; after all, being academically smart doesn’t mean I have common sense. Though hopefully one day I’ll learn to wear my Mensa status as proudly as my Jewish star.

Read more posts from Issue #10: “Geniushood.”

Photo by James Sarmiento, licensed under Creative Commons.

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