Eleven-year-old Kashmea Wahi, an Indian girl in Britain has cleared the Mensa IQ test with the highest score of 162 and is one of the youngest to achieve that, making her cleverer than Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. Anushka Binoy, who is also an 11 year old Indian girl, has scored the same to get into the high-IQ society Mensa.
Mensa is the largest and oldest high IQ society in the world. It is a non-profit organisation open to people who score at the 98th percentile or higher on a standardised, supervised IQ or other approved intelligence test.
Both Kashmea and Anushka were surprised that others in the exam hall were mostly much older than them.
Kashmea Wahi
Kashmea, is in year 6 and goes to Notting Hill And Ealing Junior School, based in West Ealing, which is a top rated independent school in the UK. Older of the two siblings, her brother Krishang is only two and a half and Kashmea loves him to bits. What else she loves? She adores Net Ball- and plays in her school team, also plays competitive Lawn Tennis and has competed in National level Chess tournaments, winning quite a few medals and trophies. While her favourite subjects are Maths and ICT, she also loves creative writing, but wants to go to Oxford to study Maths. She is very keen to learn software coding to create an app and in fact with inclination towards computers and programming the child prodigy at the age of 9, decided to try her hand at Java and Objective C, to explore if it thrills her.
Speaking about her test, Kashmea at an exclusive interview told Asian Voice, “I did not prepare any extra for this test. The test is about using more of using logic and common sense and I used whatever I have learnt at school.”
Once someone passes the test for Mensa, they are invited to join the society and pay to become a member. Becoming a member means invitations to different events which range from intellectual and academic talks to paint-balling and murder-mystery events.
Born in Mumbai in 2004, Kashmea moved to London in 2008 with her IT Consultant parents, dad Vikas Wahi, originally from Delhi and mom Pooja-Gadoo Wahi, originally from Kashmir (both currently working at the Deutsche bank). She proved to be one of the brightest, not only in sports and other extracurriculars, but always achieved top grades in academics. Since her results accrued without much effort and in spite of the little time she spent in the company of her school books, the achievement was oppugned by the astounded parents, who acknowledged her natural ability in sports, but were unappreciative of her impressive intelligence level.
Perhaps peeved by the lack of appreciation, in November 2015 around her 11th birthday, Kashmea started fidgeting with her iPad and after half an hour of meandering through a few pages, zeroed in on the Mensa webpage; she had found a way to attest her abilities.
The Mensa Cattell III B Test is unquestionably a highly respected international evaluation process and achieving a top score puts both Kashmea in the league of top 1% people in terms of level of intelligence quotient; hopefully, enough to put all concerns and questions about her studies to rest.
The girl isn't too concerned about the future and enjoys each day as it comes. Besides achieving top grades each year, she was instrumental in her school team making it to the 3rd place in the Oxford Maths challenge in 2015.
How does she plan to celebrate her Mensa success? The cheerful girl added, “Probably by going horse riding. I simply love it.”
Kashmiri Pandit community applauds
Lakshmi Kaul, Founder, Kashmiri Pandits Culture Society in the UK said, “I am extremely delighted to note Kashmea's brilliant score at the Mensa test. She makes the entire Kashmiri (Pandit) community and the Indian diaspora very proud. I wish her the very best for a bright future ahead.”
Anushka Binoy
On the other hand, Anushka, from Isleworth, west London, says she loves creative writing and wants to join the Mensa's specialist group.
Elder daughter of Binoy Joseph and Sheena Binoy, a very clever Anushka is a student of St. Mary’s Catholic Primary School, Isleworth. She also enjoys violin, dance, swimming and tennis.
Originally from Kottayam, a district of Kerala, Anushka’s family has been living in Isleworth in London since 2007. Anushka has a younger sister, Andrea who is 3.
More than 40 schools across the UK have entered children for Mensa membership last year. In fact Heathland School in Hounslow had succeeded to get in a record number of students into Mensa. Many of its students are Brit-Asians, including the head teacher Harinder Pattar.
