Dang! She beat me too.
MARGAO: With a Mensa IQ score of 162, a 15-year-old London teenager with Goan roots has beaten Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. Fabiola Mann's IQ has put her in the top 1% of intelligent people in the world, two points over the 160 scored by the scientific greats.
Mensa, founded in 1946 as a society for intelligent people, awarded Fabiola her membership certificate in August this year. The Harrow-on-the-Hill-resident, who wants to study medicine at Cambridge University and become a surgeon "because I like the idea of helping people", told STOI from London that she wasn't expecting the score.
"I had heard about Mensa and so decided to take their test," Fabiola said in an email. Being "always interested in puzzles", she "begged" her parents to apply for the test and paid the fee.
On July 30, the Northwood College School pupil sat down for a formal, supervised, three-hour test at the London UCL medical college. "The questions were slightly more confusing (from the practice IQ tests online) and we did not have much time to do them, so I could not really tell how I was doing," said Fabiola.
She had wait for a month for her scores instead of the customary two weeks as the results were lost in transit. "We went on holiday soon after (the test), and it was a month before I finally got a letter through the post telling me that I had an IQ of 162 and was invited to join Mensa. I was thrilled," said Fabiola.
Her mother Rene, a Margao native who moved to London in 1993 after marriage, said, "Obviously I had heard about Mensa and genius IQ level children, but I'm amazed that my own daughter is one."
Dad Anthony, who was born in England and is a lecturer, informed Fabiola's school, which in turn contacted local UK newspapers. Fabiola was interviewed by BBC in September and is also mentioned on the Mensa website. In her interview with 'Harrow Observer', the paper observed that "162 is the highest possible score anyone can achieve in the UK and European test".
Asked what the Mensa membership means to Fabiola, Rene, a news producer for Associated Press Television Network, told STOI from London, "People keep asking me the same thing, and to be honest I don't know. Hopefully it will mean an entry into the best universities and later job opportunities."
She quickly adds, "Of course Fabiola did not do (the test) for those reasons, these are just a mother's dreams. More than that, I hope she can go forward and realize her potential and do good in this world."
Fabiola's hobbies include martial arts — she has a purple belt in karate, and started taekwondo this year —chess and music. She plays the piano and guitar and according to her peers has an "amazing voice". She also loves creative writing and is currently working on a novel.
Fabiola's Margao-based grandparents Palikaran George, 79, and Teresa, 67, are "speechless" on their granddaughter's feat and can't wait for her to visit in December.
Good for her!
Life’s a bitch and then you die. Be thankful that we have experienced the easiest life ever available to the human species. But humans are humans...and here we are.
Mensa?
Isn’t that some kind of, like, a social club or something?
If you REALLY want to join with the high-IQ types, there is something called the “999” (Triple Nine), that is, in the 99.9 percentile.
Those folks must speak to the Mensa members slowly, and in words of no more than four syllables.
The Muslims are not pleased.
Only 162? I know of two talk show hosts who boast of higher scores. I am not going to name them.. one is a favorite and the other one’s show I like but only because his on-air staff cares the show.
That said, here is one that stumped even Einstein at first glance, and it fooled his friend.
Try the question before reading the except from Einstein's letter at the bottom.
Q1- Distance, Time, and Speed An old car has to travel a 2-mile route, uphill and down. Because it is so old, the car can climb the first mile—the ascent—no faster than an average speed of 15 mi/h. How fast does the car have to travel the second mile—on the descent it can go faster, of course—to achieve an average speed of 30 mi/h for the trip?
Problem 1 was sent to Albert Einstein by his friend Wertheimer. Einstein (and his friend Bucky) enjoyed the problems and wrote back to Wertheimer. Here is part of his reply:
Your letter gave us a lot of amusement. The first intelligence test fooled both of us (Bucky and me). Only on work-ing it out did I notice that no time is available for the down-hill run! Mr. Bucky was also taken in by the second example, but I was not.
Such drolleries show us how stupid we are!
(See Mathematical Intelligencer,Spring 1990, page 41.)
Oh, big deal. I scored a 164 when I was eighteen. Or, was that my weight? I get them mixed up.
Med school would be a waste of time for her.
She’s obviously a smart cookie good at solving those IQ test riddles. But until she turns those smarts into something productive, she’s still very much removed from the likes of Einstein or Hawking.
Lots of paper-smart folks out there who don’t amount to much in the real world, for any number of reasons. I hope she will be able to capitalize on her mental gift.
Rational thinking is a rare trait. We are all victims of emotion overtaking rational thought - look at the Libs, it is terminal for them.
“...scored a remarkable IQ of 162 in this summer’s University of London’s (UCL) Mensa medical test. It is the highest possible score anyone can achieve in the UK and European test.”
That’s only because they haven’t measured Joe Biden yet.
I only post on IQ threads because I like the term “standard deviation.”
Sheldon Cooper has a higher I.Q.
Oh, that's nothing. A couple of years back, we had a FReeper who claimed to have an IQ of 170. This same FReeper lost a $40,000 civil case, countersued the State of Washington for $15 million for being in collusion with the winning side based solely on a "knowing look", and predictably lost every appeal. He then tried to make a citizens' arrest against state Supreme Court Justice CJ Alexander, on RICO charges for not hearing his final appeal.
Let's just say that IQ numbers aren't all they're cracked up to be.
Actually, an IQ of 163 puts her in the top 0.0018%, or one person in 18,750. Anything over 135 is in the top 1%.
http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/iqtable.aspx
Many moons ago I scored 165 on a Mensa IQ test. The person administering the test read a long passage on an extremely obscure subject, in this case the minute details and terminology of ancient Greek religious practice (priests and sacrifices and such, as opposed to mythology) then I had an hour to complete a long timed multiple choice exam on the subject covered.
Unfortunately for the accuracy of the test at measuring my IQ, I had just the week before finished a long book on the subject at question.
Aced the test. The monitor about stroked out. LOL
(Also, anyone who says their IQ "is" a certain number because of a test they took earlier in life, they are mistaken. That number was an indicator of their ability, divided by their physical age, but only AT THAT AGE AND THAT MOMENT IN TIME. The next year/month/week/day, their physical age changed, and thus so would their IQ (unless they advanced their mental acuity by the exactly correct proportion during that time).
Just sayin'.
(And yes, I had high scores as a child and as an adult, and was admitted to MENSA just for my SAT scores, way back when I was a much thinner 317.)
She edged me out by 100.
No one should feel dumb because they did not get the proper answer to this question at once. After all, Einstein was stumped for a short time by this same question.
Once you see the trick, you will never be fooled by a similar question again. Indeed, if you took an IQ test and kept this question and how the trick was played in mind you would score higher than you would have had you never seen this question.
Just as in the real world, you MUST distill a problem down to its fundamentals. This is what a genius like Einstein did.
I can tell you that the unforgiving world of real-time programming will soon teach you how to get down to the bare facts.
Is it genetic or environmental?
Dang! She beat me too.