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Formation | 1978 |
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Founder | Richard Canty, Ronald Hoeflin, Kevin Langdon, Ronald Penner, Edgar Van Vleck |
Type | High IQ society |
27-5473103 [1] | |
Membership | ≈ 1,900 [2] |
Official language | English |
Regent | Steve Condie |
Website | triplenine |
The Triple Nine Society (TNS) is an international high-IQ society for adults whose score on a standardized test demonstrates an IQ at or above the 99.9th percentile of the human population. [3] [4] [5] The society recognizes scores from over 20 intelligence and academic aptitude tests. [6] TNS was founded in 1978, and, as of 2025 [update] , reports a member base of over 1,900 people in 53 US jurisdictions and 39 countries. [2] Since 2010, the organization has been a non-profit 501(c)(7) organization incorporated in Virginia, USA. [7]
The society was founded by Richard Canty, Ronald Hoeflin, Kevin Langdon, Ronald Penner, and Edgar Van Vleck, [8] [9] as a split-off of the ISPE, a similarly selective high-IQ society, with whose governance structure they were dissatisfied. [9]
TNS is led by a "Regent" and served by an Executive Committee consisting of the Regent and eight further officers, all of which are elected for two-year terms. [10]
In 2015, TNS established a 501(c)(3) subsidiary charitable organization, the Triple Nine Society Foundation, to provide scholarships to intellectually gifted students pursuing higher-education goals and for other charitable work. [11]
TNS publishes a bimonthly journal, Vidya, which contains articles, poetry, puzzles, and other creative content contributed by members conversant with a variety of subjects, as well as officer reports and other official business of the Society. [12]
TNS members mostly communicate online on the official TNS Discourse forum, official TNS Facebook group, and a variety of unofficial venues ranging from Discord to Telegram and special groups like TNS Youth and TNS LGBTQ+.
Every autumn, the society organizes an annual meeting in the United States called ggg999, [13] with "ggg" referring to "Global General Gathering". A privately organized European gathering, egg, usually takes place in late spring.
To qualify for membership, an applicant must submit a qualifying score earned on any of the standardized tests recognized by the society; these include IQ tests as well as various college admission exams and military classification tests.
For IQ tests, a qualifying score corresponds to an IQ of at least 146 for tests with standard deviation of 15 (e.g., WAIS, Stanford–Binet 5), at least 149 for tests with a standard deviation of 16 (e.g., Stanford–Binet IV and CTMM), or at least 173 for tests with a standard deviation of 24 (e.g., Cattell III-B). [14]
TNS also accepts standardized test scores that have a well-established psychometric correlation with IQ,[ citation needed ] including SAT, GRE, LSAT, ACT, and the Miller Analogies Test. [6] Required score will differ depending on the year those tests were taken.
TNS also accepts a GMAT score of 750 (for tests taken between 2000 and 2023) or a GMAT Focus Edition score of 705 (available since 2023), both of which correspond only to a percentile score of 98.2%. [15]
Better known as Hammerin' Hank, Henry Milligan was a professional boxer.…You'd never suspect that he was a member of both Mensa and the Triple Nine Society.