Step aside Einstein: Iranian school girl, Tara Sharifi tops Mensa IQ score

Step aside Einstein: Iranian school girl, Tara Sharifi tops Mensa IQ score

An 11 year old Iranian school girl is the new poster child for ingenuity after scoring the highest possible score on the Mensa IQ test.

Tara Sharifi, a student at the UK’s Aylesbury High School took the test at Oxford recently and startled moderators when she achieved a total of 162 points, pulling her well over the 140 points defined as the ‘genius benchmark’.

While the world’s most famous physicist never sat the same test, it’s been predicted that Albert Einstein would have achieved a score just shy of Sharifi’s at 160.

Sharifi expressed her shock when interviewed by the The Bucks Herald. 

“I was shocked when I got the result – I never expected to get such a good score,” she said. “It was a joint decision between me and my parents to take the test.”

Her father Hossein Sharifi told reporters he was “extremely proud” of his daughter. Though he’d expected her to do well, he hadn’t expected such an astonishing score.

“I figured she might do well when we watched TV and she would get maths questions before the contestants. I knew she was very clever but I did not think she would have such a high IQ.”

Sharifi is now qualified to become a member of Mensa and attend prestigious alumni events– something she said she looked forward to.

“It will be a wonderful opportunity to meet other people within the Mensa system. I have told some of my friends at school and they were really impressed.”

 

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