We may have just met our new hero: A young British girl received the highest possible score of 162 on a Mensa IQ test. And she's only 12 years old.
According to the The Guardian, Lydia Sebastian scored higher than both Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking on the test (Einstein never actually took it, but it's estimated he would have scored the same as Hawking's 160).
"At first, I was really nervous but once I started, it was much easier than I expected it to be and then I relaxed,” Sebastian told The Guardian. “I gave it my best shot.”
Sebastian joins the ranks of other Mensa child geniuses Nicole Barr, 12, who garnered a perfect score in August, and 10-year-old Aahil Jouher. Only 1% of all test takers score the highest possible mark. Last year, one boy was reported to have the same IQ as Einstein. He was 4 years old at the time.
Charles Darwin's IQ is estimated to be 165, and Bobby Fischer's is reportedly 187. Think you have the brains? Check out a few sample questions over at The Guardian. A sample quiz on the Mensa website includes questions like, "If a circle is one, how many is an octagon?" (answers: 2,4,6,8, or 12), and "Fill in the missing number: 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13, __ ,34,55." For a quiz specifically for American Mensa test takers, here is a worksheet with questions and answers.
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