LONDON: Yusuf Shah, an 11-year-old from Leeds, has scored 162 on an IQ test, outperforming geniuses Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, the Metro reported.
Achieving the maximum IQ for under-18s, he is in the top one percentile of the population.
The year six student’s score compares to that of world-renowned physicists Hawking and Einstein, who are thought to have scored 160.
Shah told the Metro that he decided to take the Mensa test after constantly being told how smart he was by his friends.
“I have always wanted to know if I was in the top two percent of people who take the test, “ he explained
“It feels special to have a certificate for me and about me,” he added.
Shah told the Metro that he loves doing anything that stimulates his brain and enjoys sudoku puzzles and solving Rubik’s cubes.
The math whiz began playing with the iconic cubes in January and cracked them in just one month.
To celebrate his achievement, Shah went to chicken restaurant chain Nando’s with his parents and brothers.
“I was so proud. He is the first person to take the Mensa test in the family,” his mother Sana said.
She added: “I was actually a little concerned too. He has always gone into a hall full of kids to take tests.
“We thought he might be intimidated by the adults at the center. But he did brilliantly.
“I still tell him that, ‘your dad is still smarter than you.’ We take it all light-heartedly,” Sana said, adding that she instills in her son the importance of hard work, irrespective of his talent.
Shah aspires to study mathematics at Cambridge or Oxford, while his eight-year-old brother Khalid hopes to take the Mensa test when he is older.
