An 11-year-old British boy has scored higher on an IQ test than Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.
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The ‘genius’ benchmark is set at 140, and Arnav Sharma, from Reading, passed the notoriously difficult Mensa test with a score of 162 – the maximum possible result one can receive on the paper.
Sharma’s score is two points higher than German-born theoretical physicist Einstein and cosmologist Hawking.
His mark in the exam, which primarily measures verbal reasoning ability, puts him in the top one percent of the nation in terms of IQ level.
According to the Independent, Arnav had done zero preparation and had never seen what a typical paper looked like before taking it.
“The Mensa test is quite hard and not many people pass it, so do not expect to pass,” he told the newspaper.
“There were about seven or eight people there. A couple were children but the rest were adults. It was what I thought it would be.”
Sharma, who is of Indian origin, said he was not nervous before sitting the test.
“I had no preparation at all before taking the Mensa exam. It took about 2.5 hours. There were non-verbal questions as well as verbal questions.
“It wasn’t that difficult but I had to guess a few questions as there wasn’t much time.”
He added: “My family were surprised but they were also very happy when I told them about the result.”
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Sharma’s mother, Meesha Dhamija Sharma, said it was not until he was two and a half years old that she became aware of his mathematical abilities.
“He was counting up to more than 100. That was when I stopped teaching him because I came to know that there is no end to his numbers.”
When asked whether there is anyone else in his family with unusually high IQ, she said: “His dad is quite clever as well, but not as clever.”
Mensa is one of the most exclusive clubs in the world, with members only able to join if their IQ test results are in the top two percent of the nation.
There are currently 20,000 members in Mensa and only 1,500 are under the age of 18.
Mensa was founded in 1946 in Oxford by Lancelot Lionel Ware, a scientist and lawyer, and Roland Berrill, an Australian barrister, but the organization later spread around the world.
Its mission is to “identify and foster human intelligence for the benefit of humanity.”
