11-year-old boy scores highest on Mensa IQ test ‘beating Einstein and Hawking’

A schoolboy scored the highest possible score in a Mensa IQ test and surpassed geniuses like Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.

Yusuf Shah, 11, from Leeds, England, scored 162 – the highest possible score for the Under-18s. His score puts him ahead of Einstein and Hawkings by two points.

Yusuf said he wanted to test himself by taking the IQ quiz after his friends kept telling him how smart he was.

He ended up scoring in the top 1% of people.

Yusuf said: “Everyone at school thinks I’m very smart and I always wanted to know if I was in the top 2% of people taking the test.

“It’s special to have a certificate for me and about me.”

The child genius, who hopes to study maths at Oxbridge, said when he’s not studying he enjoys Sudoku and finishing Rubik’s cubes.

His mother Sana said: “I was so proud. He is the first person to take the Mensa test in the family.

“Actually, I was a bit worried too – he always went to a room full of kids to take tests.

“We thought he might be intimidated by the adults at the center. But he did it brilliantly.”

However, his mother jokes that his father is always smarter.

“I always tell him ‘your dad is always smarter than you,'” his mother joked.

Papa Irfan said: “It’s a difficult test to prepare for. We just did what we were already doing – nothing specific for the IQ test.”

Mensa is the largest high IQ society in the world and only those who score in the 98th percentile or higher are allowed to join.