12-year-old girl could be smarter than Einstein and Hawking, Mensa test reveals
Lydia Sebastian always had a feeling that she might be quite intelligent, and recently, it has been proven in a test she took during summer.
The 12-year-old girl scored 162 on Mensa's Cattell III B paper, which, if one attains, is an indication that the IQs of well-known geniuses Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking have now been stamped on.
However, the British student attending Colchester County high school, a selective grammar school in Essex, England, says she doesn't feel good about the comparison.
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In an interview with CNN, Sebastian said, "I don't think I can be compared to such great intellectuals such as Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. They've achieved so much. I don't think it's right."
Currently in Year 8, Sebastian says she has been pestering her parents for a whole year about the test and she was finally given the chance to get on it during the summer holidays. After sitting on it, the test results reveal that it wasn't too hard at all for her.
When she was about to begin, she said she was "really nervous...and I thought it was going to be really hard. But as I started the test, I thought it was a bit easier than I thought it was going to be."
The Cattell III B test's top adult score, which focuses primarily on verbal reasoning, is 161. Those who get about 148 and above are considered to have high IQs, making it into the top 2 percent of the score that Mensa allows if one wants to be part of the program. Sebastian garnered a score of 162, thus giving her the top spot in only 1 percent of the population.
According to Mensa's website, a person who wants to join the "High IQ Society" needs to get an IQ score measured in the top 2 percent of the population in a recognized IQ test. At the moment, the group allows for anyone aged 10 and a half or over to take the Mensa Supervised IQ Test, which may be taken at venues held throughout the year in the United Kingdom.
