Pls Hndle Thx: But I'm in MENSA!

Ed. note: Have a question for next week? Send it in to advice@abovethelaw.com.

Dear ATL,

We’re at NYLS and I’m in an argument with my friends for resumes for interviews with law firms.

I’m a member of MENSA and I think it’s okay to put “Member, MENSA” under my interests on my resume.  Some of my friends say it’s not okay.  What do you think?

— Smarter Than the Average Bear

Dear Smarter Than the Average Bear,

Let’s just cut to the chase here: listing  “Member, MENSA” on your résumé is incompatible with attending New York Law School. If you don’t have the IQ or EQ to realize  that, somebody needs to revoke your MENSA membership immediately and slash your tires with a Phi Beta Kappa key pin

You see, when you put outrageous claims — like MENSA membership — on a résumé, you have to be prepared to back them up. When an interviewer snidely asks you (and he or she will ask you), “If you’re so smart, why did you go to NYLS?” — well, nearly any response you can give will be inadequate. Lousy grades in college? FAIL. Bad LSAT score? EPIC FAIL. Your only legitimate excuse is that NYLS offered you a full ride, but if that is in fact the case, why couldn’t you have used your superior intellect to convince a single school in tiers 1 or 2 to bankroll you, the next John Marshall?

Résumés require a salvation-through-good-works approach. You’re supposed to lead interviewers to deduce that you’re smart, by listing your impressive accomplishments. Stating that you’ve been officially “classified” as a genius by an organization of abject nerds doesn’t help your candidacy for any job, except possibly one at the MENSA Gazette, and only makes you look like a pretentious jerkhat. I’m a member of the Bedlington Terrier Club of America, but you don’t see me flaunting that in peoples’s faces.

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It kind of sounds like you’re trying to counter the whole NYLS thing with the “But I’m smart! I swear!” approach, but nothing is less appealing to interviewers than when people brag about doing number sequences and shape rotations in their head in an effort to save face. You go to NYLS; own it. The first sentence of your question contained a grammatical error; own it. Embrace your mediocrity, because it looks like your MENSA intellect just got pwned by my 162 LSAT score.

Your friend,
Marin

Holy s**t. Okay. Well, I guess I’m on the pro-MENSA side?

[During today’s performance of “The Sound of Recession,” the part of happy and optimistic Fräulein Maria will be played by Elie Mystal.]

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens;
MENSA makes me think of super smart persons;
Challenging job scenes make NYLS kids bleed;
But one high IQ will be all that you need…

When the markets crash;
When recruiters laugh;
When your law school is bad;
You must make them see the one time you achieved,
And your résumé won’t go… in the trash!

Honestly, I don’t know what else to tell you. Rightly or wrongly, there’s a lot of stigma attached to your NYLS degree when you are trying to land a law firm job in a hyper-competitive market. Maybe MENSA can’t hurt? NYLS is a perfectly credible law school; it just doesn’t have the kind of reputation a lot of (frequently elitist) hiring partners are looking for when they have an abundance of résumés. If you’re trying to do the job search equivalent of escaping Nazi-controlled Austria, you’re going to have to take some chances.

I just hope you have a solid fall back career. Au pairs still get paid decently and don’t have to worry about rent!

— Maria von Trapp

Ed. note: Have a question for next week? Send it in to advice@abovethelaw.com.

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