— THE HIGH IQ SOCIETY

Every year about 30,000 people in 50 countries accept the challenge of Mensa and apply to join.
Why?
   Well, yes, they want to find out if they are really intelligent. They know that intelligence is not everything, but it is not nothing, either. They also know that in a modern technological society a small cadre of trained and intelligent people have most effect on people's lives. They would like to know their I.Q., the same as they know their height and weight, for while we cannot measure honesty, morality, loyalty or drive, we can measure intelligence.

   What is Mensa? The idea of a panel composed of people of high intelligence was first suggested in 1945 in a broadcast talk over the BBC by the late Professor Sir Cyril Burt, who held the Chair of Psychology at London University and who later became our first President. In the same year Mensa was founded by Mr. Roland Berrill and Dr. L. L. Ware, both barristers.

   Mensa is a unique society. The only qualification for membership is a score on an intelligence test higher than that of 98% of the general population. Its primary purpose is providing contact between intelligent people, but its other function of research in psychology and social science is scarcely less important. Mensa is an international society: at present there are over 50,000 active members in 14 countries. In the U.S.A. applications are processed by the American Mensa Selection Agency located in Brooklyn, NY. We have members of almost every occupation — businessmen, clerks, doctors, editors, factory workers, farm laborers, housewives, policemen, prisoners, lawyers, teachers, soldiers, scientists, students — and of every age.

   Mensa is the Latin word for table. We are a round table society where no one has special precedence. We fill a void for many intelligent people otherwise cut off from contact with other good minds — contact that is important to them, but

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