— Guide
What IQ score do you need for Mensa?
Mensa accepts members who score at or above the 98th percentile on a recognised, supervised intelligence test. The exact IQ number depends on which test you take, because different tests use different standard deviations:
- Wechsler scales (WAIS-IV, WISC-V) — IQ 130 or higher (SD = 15)
- Stanford-Binet (SB5) — IQ 132 or higher (SD = 16)
- Cattell III B — IQ 148 or higher (SD = 24)
- Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices — score equivalent to the 98th percentile
All of these correspond to the same underlying threshold: the top 2% of the population. The difference in IQ numbers is purely a matter of scaling convention, not a difference in difficulty.
The two paths into Mensa
→Pause. Find out YOUR IQ before you keep reading.1. Mensa's own supervised admission test
Most national Mensa chapters offer a supervised, in-person admission test you can sit at a local testing centre. This is the standard path — typically two short timed reasoning tests, with the higher of the two scores used. Fees vary by country (UK: £24.95, US: $99, others typically €40–80).
2. Prior qualifying evidence
If you've already taken a recognised test under supervised conditions, you can submit those results instead. Mensa publishes a list of accepted tests on each national chapter's website. The result must be relatively recent (some chapters require within the last 10 years) and must come from a proctored administration, not a home or online test.
What about online "Mensa" tests?
→Curious how YOU score? 20-min calibrated test.Mensa publishes a free workout on its website that is explicitly labelled as a self-check — it does not count for admission. Anyone claiming a "Mensa-qualifying" score from an unsupervised online test is mistaken. No online test, including this one, counts for Mensa admission.
That said, a calibrated online estimate is still useful to know before paying for the supervised test. If you score well below 130 on a properly normed online assessment, your chances of clearing 130 on the supervised version are low — most people don't experience large score jumps between formats.
Get a calibrated estimate first
→The numbers above? Find out where YOU land.Core Brain runs a 3PL Bayesian IRT estimator with items calibrated to the Wechsler distribution. It does not qualify you for Mensa, but it gives you a much more realistic estimate than the typical clickbait quiz — including a 95% confidence interval, so you can see how far from the 130 threshold your actual estimate sits.
Take the Core Brain IQ test →