About
the Mega Society
The Mega Society is a high IQ society open to people who
have scored at the one-in-a-million level on a test of general intelligence credibly claimed to be able to discriminate at that level. The Guinness
Book of World Records stated that:
The most elite ultra High IQ Society is the Mega Society with 26 members with percentiles of 99.9999 or 1 in a
million.
The public profile of the Mega Society increased with the publication of the Mega Test in
1985 by Dr. Hoeflin.
Notable people who
took the Mega Test, meeting the Mega Society
entrance requirements, include author and columnist Marilyn vos Savant,
mathematician Solomon W. Golomb,
Chris Langan, and former governor of New Hampshire and White House Chief of
Staff John H. Sununu.
Noesis is the journal of the Mega Society. Brian Wiksell is the Administrator of the Mega Society. Inquiries regarding membership should
be directed to him via email at bwiksell@megasociety.org. We are working to put
past issues
of Noesis and its
predecessor, the Megarian, onto the Web.
Anyone interested
in working
on this project should
contact the Internet Officer.
Noesis is distributed via email and archived on the Society
Web site. Members and non-members who
wish to receive it should
contact the Editor.
Members are invited to join the list mega@groups.io.
Mega Society History
The Society was founded in 1982 by Dr. Ronald K. Hoeflin
to facilitate
psychometric research. The 606 Society (6 in 106), founded by
Christopher Harding, was incorporated into the new society and those with IQ scores on Kevin
Langdon’s Adult Intelligence Test (LAIT) of 173 or more were also invited
to join. The LAIT qualifying score was subsequently raised to 175; official scoring of the LAIT terminated at the end of 1993, after the test was compromised.
A number of different tests were accepted by 606 and
during the first few years of Mega’s existence.
Later, the LAIT and Dr. Hoeflin’s Mega Test
became the sole official entrance tests, by vote of the membership. The Mega
was also compromised,
so scores after 1994 are currently not accepted. Following the retirement of the Mega Test, Dr. Hoeflin's Titan Test was added by vote of the membership, but was retired in 2020 due to also having been compromised. More recently, Dr. Hoeflin's Ultra Test and Power Test were added to the list of acceptable tests with a required score of 70 and 34, respectively.
Hoeflin, Ronald
K. "World's Most Difficult IQ Test.", Omni magazine, April 1985, pp. 128
ff.
Seipp, Catherine, "Brains -- They’re
the smartest people in L.A.", Los Angeles
(magazine), November 1987, pp. 210–216.
Graham, Ellen, "For
Minds of Mega, the Mensa Test, is a Real No-Brainer",
The Wall Street Journal
subs. req., April 9, 1992, p. A1.
Simonton, Dean Keith (1994). Greatness: Who makes History and Why. Guilford
Press, 225. ISBN 0-89862-201-8.
"Genius
Issue", Esquire (magazine),
November 1999.
(1999) Lawrence A Pervin, Oliver P
John (editors) Handbook of Personality. Guilford Press, 632. ISBN 1-57230-695-5.
Jacobs, A. J. (2004). The
Know-It-All: One Man's Humble
Quest to Become the Smartest Man in the World. Simon & Schuster, 243. ISBN
0-7432-5060-5
"Mind Games: the hardest IQ test you'll ever love suffering through,"
Omni magazine, April
1990, pp. 90 ff.
Baumgold, Julie. "New York magazine", February 6, 1989.
Anderson, Jack;
Dale Van Atta, "Is 176 I.Q.
Enough for White House?",
Washington Post, November 28, 1988.
Introduction to the Hoeflin
Tests. Similar reports
about the actress Uma Thurman
are an urban myth.