An 11-year-old Iranian high school student in the United Kingdom recently scored so high on her Mensa IQ test, that she surpassed Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.
A student at Aylesbury High School, Tara Sharifi, recently took the Mensa IQ test in Oxford where she scored above the “genius benchmark” of 140.
The 11-year-old student scored 162 points on the test — two points ahead of Einstein himself along with Professor Stephen Hawking.
The Mensa IQ test requires its questions to be answered within a set time frame and focuses on the student’s ability to understand the meanings of words.
“I was shocked when I got the result – I never expected to get such a good score,” Sharifi said.
Sharifi now qualifies for the Mensa membership with the score she received — which is also known as the High IQ society.
“It was a joint decision between me and my parents to take the test,” the girl said. “It will be a wonderful opportunity to meet other people within the Mensa system. I have told some of my friends at school and they were really impressed.”
She continued that when she gets older, she would go into “something related to mathematics.”
Her father shared that while he was surprised by the result, he was very proud of his daughter’s accomplishment.
“I am extremely proud but very surprised at how well Tara scored,” her father, Hossein, shared with Bucks Herald UK. “I figured she might do well when we watched TV and she would get [math] questions before the contestants. I knew she was very clever but I did not think she would have such a high IQ.”
Interestingly enough, according to the Mensa sight, intelligence cannot be improved significantly in adulthood. The site goes on to explain how intelligence is actually a personality trait influenced by both genetic and environmental influences, with our cognitive abilities developing up to the age of 17-20.
So is intelligence the same as knowledge? According to Mensa, this is a tricky question to ask.
“These two concepts are often confused, although the two are not the same. Intelligence is an inherited quality that many people define in many ways, but knowledge is acquired through learning. There can be an approximate correlation between the two: a person who is educated is not necessarily highly intelligent, but someone who is very intelligent is more likely to be open to new information, more interested, more curious about the world, and they will usually find it easier to remember what has been read or heard. Nonetheless, those who are intelligent but not specifically educated are not uncommon.”
Sound like your cup of tea? Maybe you want to try your shot at joining Mensa? Not so fast…
“To become a Mensan, all you need to do is demonstrate you have an IQ in the top two per cent. There is no other criterion. That means scoring at the 98th percentile or above on an accepted intelligence test. The test can be one conducted by the national Mensa in the country where you live or it can be an approved test that you have taken elsewhere.”
To learn more about taking the Mensa test, click here.
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