And he said it was almost like a switch went off. And suddenly overnight he turned into like Jesus Christ. And that he was superior and better than everybody like he was a deity. He said it was that dramatic and that profound he said it went right to his head." Bouchey herself likewise recalled a story about a 13-year-old Raniere's relationships with girls: "dozens of young girls were calling the house and [Raniere's mother] was overhearing his conversations with them where he was telling every single girl the same thing: I love you. You're the special one. You’re important. You are the only one in my life and I love you.’ And she says, he's saying this to all these girls. He's clearly lying ‘cause all of them are not special!" In 1982, Raniere graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) with a 2.26 GPA. According to reporting by the "Times Union", in 1984, the 24-year-old Raniere became sexually involved with 15-year-old Gina Melita after the two met in a theater group. After ending their relationship, Melita introduced him to her friend Gina Hutchinson, also 15. Gina Hutchinson's sister Heidi told the "Times Union" that Raniere became sexually involved with Gina. After Heidi found Raniere climbing into Gina's bedroom window and confronted them, Raniere told her that Gina was a "Buddhist goddess meant to be with him." Gina dropped out of school and continued her relationship with Raniere, working at his company Consumers' Buyline for a time; she later died by suicide. In June 1988, the "Times Union" profiled Raniere, reporting on his membership in the Mega Society after he achieved a high score on founder Ronald K. Hoeflin's MEGA test, an unsupervised, 48-question test published in the April 1985 issue of "Omni" magazine. Although the MEGA test has been widely criticized as not having been properly validated, the 1989 edition of the "Guinness Book of World Records" (the last to include a category for Highest IQ) described the Hoeflin Research Group as "the most exclusive ultrahigh IQ society," and identified Raniere, Marilyn vos Savant, and Eric Hart as the highest-scoring members of the group. Through the 1980s, Raniere was involved with Amway, the multi-level marketing company. Heidi Hutchinson recalled that during the late '80s, Raniere was fascinated by Amway, Scientology, and neuro-linguistic programming.