How the Mensa IQ test actually works

What Mensa is

Mensa International is a society founded in 1946 whose only membership criterion is a score within the upper 2% of the general population on an approved intelligence test. National groups such as American Mensa and British Mensa run their own admission sessions and social activities. The 2% line corresponds to about the 98th percentile, which on a mean-100, SD-15 scale is a score of about 130, and about 132 on an SD-16 scale.

How admission works

There are two routes. The first is a supervised admission test session run by the national organisation, with a proctor, standard timing and a fee. The second is submitting evidence of a qualifying score from a previous professionally administered test; American Mensa publishes the list of tests and scores it accepts. In both routes the score comes from a controlled administration, which is why an online quiz result is never accepted.

The Mensa Norway online test

Mensa Norway hosts a free, untimed-per-item online figure-matrix test that reports a score between 85 and 145. It is the test most people mean when they say they "took the Mensa test online". Its own page describes it as an indication of general cognitive ability and says it is not a substitute for professional intelligence tests. Treat it as good practice in the matrix format, not as a Mensa score.

How to prepare

Supervised Mensa tests and most other admission tests lean heavily on figure matrices and on verbal or numerical reasoning. The most useful preparation is to learn the rule families that matrices use: progression of one attribute across a row, distribution of three shapes so that each appears once per row and column, two attributes varying independently, rotation by a fixed angle, and counts. Once you can describe the rule in words before looking at the options, the options stop being a guess.

Our abstract-reasoning and matrix routes generate these families with the rule named in the review, so you can see which family you miss. They report accuracy, not an IQ, and they are not affiliated with Mensa.