London:
After scoring an enviable 162 in an IQ test, this Indian-origin girl now finds herself in the same league of brilliant minds as Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates. 12-year-old Neha Ramu, an Indian-origin girl in London, is now part of an elite group called the Mensa society, an exclusive club for people with high IQs.
"Neha scored 162 on the Cattell IIIB test, putting her within the top one per cent of people in the country," a spokesman for British Mensa said.
Her IQ scores indicate that she is more intelligent than physicist Stephen Hawking, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and scientist Albert Einstein, who are all thought to have an IQ of 160.
An ardent gamer, Neha confesses that she spends more time playing video games than studying. She is also a Harry Potter fan.
"Some of the TV news said that I was studying really hard. But my friends and I found it really hard to believe because I usually play lots of my games with them. So I don't study at all," Neha says.
Her parents, both doctors, say she always did well at school, but were stunned with the test results. They discovered her potential when she got a perfect score in her school entrance exam.
"Tiffin girls' school is one of the top grammar schools and she topped that (entrance exam) , scoring 280 out of 280. That's when I realised she has real potential to achieve something," her mother, Dr Jayashree, says. Her parents had moved to London from Bangalore a few years ago. Neha was seven at the time.
Endless opportunities await Neha. A medical degree from Oxford or Harvard University is among one of the many academic options she is considering. However, for now, it seems Neha is happy just playing video games.