A 12 year old girl scores the highest in Mensa IQ test beating Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking!Lydia Sebastian, an Indian origin, British schoolgirl has beaten Einstein and Hawking with her exceptional IQ score in the Mensa IQ test which according to her is ‘pretty easy’.What is this Mensa IQ test and why is it so important:
Lydia who is British school girl and from Langham in East Anglia, appeared for her Mensa paper during her school holidays and had scored the highest possible score in this IQ test. Lydia herself was quite surprised to see herself scoring exceptionally well. Colchester Gazatte’s report mentions that according to Lydia the test was “much easier” than she expected it to be.
What is this Mensa IQ test and why is it so important:
Mensa is considered to be one of the oldest intelligence society in the world and it accepts only those individuals as members who score in the 98th percentile on an IQ test. Eligibility criteria for any person to get the membership is to score at least 132 or higher. A member of Mensa requires to pay an annual fee of £55 to stay connected with other intelligent members of Mensa through conferences, gatherings and other similar interest meets. Lydia appeared for the Mensa test in an examination hall that was located at London’s Birkbeck College and had to answer questions pertaining to language skills and sense of logic. This girl who has just begun her second year at the Colchester County High School for Girls was competing with much older people during this IQ test (Cattrall III B paper). In all the test had 150 questions with a maximum score of 162, for kids under 18 years of age. Just imagine, Lydia scored a score of 162! Lydia’s father, Arun Sebastian, hails from Kerala, India and works as a radiologist at Colchester General Hospital while her mother, Erika Kottiath works with Barclays Bank as an associate director. Arun said seeing his daughter score the highest possible score on one of the tough IQ test he was “overwhelmed”. He said: “Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking got an IQ of 160. To be honest, I didn’t really believe it.” Lydia’s parents are very proud of her achievement and they also recalled that she had started to speak when she was only six months old and has been playing violin since the age of 4 which makes them believe she is a gifted child. At Lydia’s age, most of the kids will not even know what Mensa test is, however Lydia wanted to appear for it for quite some time recalls her father. Though Lydia has an affinity for mathematics, she had outperformed the language and reasoning based test. The overall nature of the questionnaire at the Mensa IQ test is known to be tough making it very difficult to prepare, however Lydia says she gave her ‘best shot’. As per records, the youngest intelligent member of British Mensa is a two and a half year old kid. This indicates Lydia is not the youngest kid to score exceptionally well in Mensa. Nonetheless with her score of 162, Lydia has definitely made a place for herself in the group of intelligent people. Lydia says she wants to make her career in mathematics.
