The Village Voice ran a fascinating article about the strange world of uber-elite IQ test societies. The profile revolves around Ronald Hoeflin who got bored with MENSA. According to the Voice profile,
Since the early ’80s, he’s founded four societies for the “severely gifted”: the Top One Percent Society, One-in-a-Thousand Society, Prometheus Society (top .003 percent), and Mega Society (top .0001 percent).
The article notes that Hoeflin is “fascinated by the idea of a ‘maximum human potential'”, but for someone with whose IQ is supposed to be around 190, Hoeflin doesn’t seem to be doing much with his potential. For example, the Voice notes that Hoeflin is working on a multi-volume work, but the contents of the book don’t sound particularly intelligent,
In an autobiographical section in his Encyclopedia of Categories, he interprets the cover design he did for one journal as an unconscious manifestation of the stages of psychosexual development (“There’s the bell-shaped curve. It looks like a breast. The Y-axis is phallic. 99.9 is sperm”) and reproduces the results of his aptitude and intelligence tests . . .
Not exactly world-changing, potential-reaching stuff there.
I’ve been skeptical of raw capabilities on standardized tests ever since taking the ACT and SAT tests in high school. I scored so high (99+ percentile) on both that I got my picture in the local paper and got a couple of nice scholarships that were driven by test scores. My GPA at the time — 2.5. The university I ultimately went to actually sent me a letter after I graduated bitching that I had failed the math class I took in my last semester of high school.
I read a story a couple years ago about a kid who illustrates the silliness that goes with these sorts of tests and evaluations. The student had achieved a perfect score on the ACT — but he had retaken it several times to do so. Getting a 99.9 percentile score wasn’t enough; only perfection would do. What a waste. I hope he doesn’t end up writing digressions about the psychosexual meanings of the bell-shaped curve.
Source:
The Intelligencer. Rachel Aviv, The Village Voice, August 1, 2006.