Rajgauri Pawar, a 12 year old powerhouse of knowledge scored a remarkable 162 in the British Mensa IQ test, beating Albert Einstein's estimated score and Stephen Hawking's 160. Her score landed her a space in the elite British Mensa membership for high IQ talents across the globe.
“I am just feeling on top of the world and can't explain in words. It's an honour for me to represent India on foreign soil and achieve such a feat,” Pawar said. She said she was nervous before the test. “But it was fine and I'm really pleased to have done so well.” She also added, “I would like to pursue medicine in the future and am also inclined towards topics including Physics, Astronomy and Environment. I was preparing for entrance exams to secondary schools. I secured admission at Altrincham Girls Grammar School, which is one of the coveted institutions in the UK, and my parents suggested that I attempted the British Mensa IQ test. Anyone above the age of 10.5 years can take the test. As it was something different and was like a competition across all age groups, it sounded interesting and worth focusing on.”
Her father Dr Surajkumar Pawar, a research scientist at the University of Manchester, said that currently there are just 20,000 such individuals, including around 1500 children, who fall in the 2 per cent percentile. “My daughter with a top 1 per cent score leads the tally, making her one of the youngest to achieve such a feat.”
Rajgauri said, “It was challenging. The test was kind of a mixed bag, easy at the beginning and got tough at the end. The key difficulty was completing the test in time. So you are basically judged based on your skill set to manage time and the correctness of your answers.”
