Getting your IQ Tested - FAQs

Membership of Mensa is open to persons who have attained a score within the upper two percent of the general population on an approved intelligence test that has been properly administered and supervised. There is no other qualification for initial membership eligibility.

Generally, there are two ways to prove that you qualify for Mensa: either take a test administered by Mensa, or submit a qualifying test score from another approved test. There are a large number of intelligence tests that are ‘approved’. More information on whether a test you have taken (or plan to take) is approved, as well as information on the procedure for taking the Mensa test, can be obtained from your nearest Mensa office.

Please be aware that online tests cannot be used for admission to Mensa. Also, many tests are not valid for people under the age of sixteen. If you have any other queries regarding eligibility or testing in general, please contact Mensa International for further information.

The term ‘IQ score’ is widely used but poorly defined. There are a large number of tests with different scales. A result on one test of 132 can be the same as a score of 148 on another test. Some intelligence tests don’t use IQ scores at all. This is why Mensa keeps it simple with a cutoff of 98%: candidates who have achieved a score at or above the 98th percentile on a standard test of intelligence will qualify for Mensa. Simple! But getting a straight answer to the question, ‘What’s my IQ?’, may not be so simple!

You need to contact the testing service that administered the test for you, requesting that they send you a report showing your score. Include as much information as you can about yourself, and about when and where you were tested. If you can’t give an exact answer, an approximation is better than nothing. Many testing services charge a fee for sending reports; you should give the testing service a call to find out how much they charge before requesting the report.

If your school administered the IQ test you took, write to them and ask for a CERTIFIED copy of your score. It must include your name, date of birth, the name of the test, and a clearly defined number (i.e., IQ score, or national percentile score). Finally, the school seal must be stamped on the report. N.B.: Please note that Mensa does not accept achievement tests.

For psychologist/agency testing, you should make a request to have the report sent on a professional letterhead, and also ask for the psychologist’s or agency’s license or registration number to be included. Mensa only accepts tests given by people qualified to carry out testing privately. As well as your personal details, the name, date and full score of the test must be given, and the report must be signed. Any signature-guaranteed or notarized copy of any of the reports will be accepted. N.B.: Please note that non-verifiable copies may be rejected. 

If any of the above cases apply to you, it’s probably best if you ask Mensa to test you. It’s all very straightforward. You’ll be put in contact with the local testing coordinator who’ll tell you where and when you can take a test. They’ll also be able to tell you how much (the price of Mensa tests vary from country to country).

Yes, in some countries a pre-test is available and you can take it in the privacy and comfort of your own home. To find out whether such a test is available in your country, please contact your nearest Mensa office.

When you’ve finished the pre-test, return it to the testing centre. When it’s been marked, you’ll be notified of your result. If your score’s is high enough, you’ll be invited to take a qualifying supervised test. The pre-test is just for practice: you can’t use it to qualify for Mensa even if you score at or above the 98th percentile. Taking a pre-test is not required for admission; however, many people take it simply for the challenge.

If you want to take a practice test online, why not try the Mensa IQ Challenge on this site? When you submit your answers, your test is instantly scored and you can see how you fared. Please note that, as with the pre-tests mentioned above, the Mensa IQ Challenge is just for practice: it’s not an official IQ test, and can’t be used for qualification to join Mensa. 

Mensa’s Constitution states that the criterion for membership is a pass at or above the 98th percentile in an approved intelligence test. For us to be able to accurately measure the IQ of candidates we need to be assured that the tests being used are valid.

Various paper-based intelligence tests have successfully been used for many decades but, sadly, they may be coming to the end of their useful life for our purposes, partly because many of the tests are quite old, but also because of the internet and the increasing likelihood that test items can be leaked online. Because of that, Mensa International is in the final stages of implementing computerised adaptive testing (CAT).

One of the main advantages of CAT – and probably the most important one from the perspective of secure testing – is that the test does not have a fixed set of test items. Instead, it has a large item bank from which it selects individual items so that their difficulty matches the candidate’s ability estimate. The actual ability estimate is recalibrated after each response, based on the pattern of all previous answers.  So, for example, if the test subject answers a moderately difficult question correctly, the following question will be of greater difficulty; if incorrectly, the following question will be easier.  This iterative process is continued until the program has correctly identified the correct level of IQ.

Since with CAT test takers will receive different questions, there is no answer key that could be leaked as in the case of tests that have fixed items. 

We will be rolling out the Mensa adaptive test in the very near future and individual national Mensa groups will publish details on their websites and social media.

If you happen to be resident in a country that doesn’t yet have a national Mensa group, please contact Mensa International for more information about where, when and how you can get tested.