PROBABILITY QUESTION
MENSA is for people who score above the 98th percentile on accredited IQ tests.
98% of people who are eligible don't join.
98% of MENSA members don't join until the're older and have exhausted every other means of making friends.
98% of parents wouldn't sign their obviously advanced kid up at an age where she has no sense of the sheer nerditude involved.
Quick, Brainiac, what're the odds ofa 2-yo joining?
Answer: 1/0.02^4, or 1 in 6,250,000.
Which is funny, because when 2.75-yo Hampshire UK [ed note: Old Hampshire?] toddler Georga Brown's parents signed her up, after taking her for an IQ test, they found out she was only the second youngest member in the group's history.
"The youngest ever member was a boy, who was several days younger than Georgia when he joined in the 1990s."
Britain's birthrate: about 650-670,000 babies/year.
Girl, 2, becomes member of Mensa [bbc.co.uk]
"Psychologist Joan Freeman, who tested Georgia, said she thought the toddler could have scored even higher but needed a nap after 45 minutes of work."
Funny, that's my problem in life, too.
I saw this on Yahoo today, but it was a video link to some ABC morning buffoon show. It had an LOL moment at the end in the "what should you do if you think your child is gifted" segment: "Most importantly, let your kid be a kid." Yeah, by signing her up in Mensa, for example.
Talk about a fluff piece, they compared the kid's intelligence to Stephen Hawking, relatively speaking. Heck, they could have compared any kid to a chimpanzee and it would have been equally relevant! Funny though, I thought they were American, her Mom's accent sure sounded so to me, at least.
I read the article and was stunned (as a US IQ specialist) that the psychologist was impressed by the fact that the kid was able to state that she was wearing a pink shirt and purple tights. Ridiculous. Sham. No IQ is valid until 5 and up anyway...
[I know, that made no sense, either. my kid had a freakin' phd in pink and purple before she was two. -ed.]
I find it bizarre how people are always so impressed by Mensa members. Yet just about every lawyer in NYC I know scored high enough on the LSAT to automatically qualify for membership:
http://www.us.mensa.org/Content/AML/NavigationMenu/Join/SubmitTestScores/QualifyingTestScores/QualifyingScores.htm
Heck, my SAT, GRE and LSAT scores were all more than high enough to qualify for Mensa membership. I'm smart, but I'm no genius.