At 162 IQ points, Indian-origin boy in UK brighter than Einstein

LONDON: A 11-year-old Indian-origin boy in the UK has secured the top possible score of 162 on a Mensa IQ test, two points higher than geniuses Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, making him one of the brainiest children in the country.

Arnav Sharma, from Reading town in southern  England, passed the infamously difficult test a few weeks ago with zero preparation and had never seen what a typical paper looked like before taking it. His mark in the exam, which primarily measures verbal reasoning ability, puts him in the top one per cent of the nation in terms of IQ level.

 “The Mensa test is quite hard and not many people pass it so do not expect to pass,” Arnav said. “I took the exam at the Salvation centre and it took about two and a half hours,” he recalled, adding there were about seven or eight people there. A couple of them were children but the rest were adults. It was not until he was two-and-a-half years old that she became aware of his mathematical prowess. “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,” Arnav’s mother said. “It is a high mark which only a small percentage of people in the country will achieve,” a spokesperson for Mensa said. Mensa is believed to be the largest and oldest high IQ society in the world.