This 12-year-old girl just crushed Mensa’s IQ test

You know that sense of ultimate relief you get when the test you’re taking isn’t as bad as you expected? That’s what 12-year-old Lydia Sebastian felt when she sat down with pencil and paper just the other day — only this British preteen wasn’t writing a historical essay or puzzling through word problems, she was acing Mensa’s Cattell III B test.

Finishing the test minutes early, Lydia answered all 150 questions to rack up the maximum score of 162, putting her in the top 1% of all test-takers who’ve completed the verbal reasoning exam and earning her a spot in British Mensa’s ranks (only the top 2% make it in). According to her parents, Lydia’s been wanting to take the IQ test for over a year, and though she’s always been brilliant (she started talking at six months, playing violin at four years, and has always been a voracious reader), they were blown away by just how high her score was.

“[Lydia] had looked at the websites for the IQ tests herself and had shown an interest in them and talked to my wife about them, so she said: ‘Why don’t you go ahead with them?’” Lydia’s dad Arun Sebastian told The Guardian. “When I heard she had the maximum possible mark, I was overwhelmed, and so was my wife.”

For Lydia, though, it was no big deal: “At first, I was really nervous but once I started, it was much easier than I expected it to be and then I relaxed,” she admitted. “I gave it my best shot really.”

The second 12-year-old British girl to rock a perfect score on the Mensa test this year alone (we told you about Nicole Barr just last month), Lydia is just the next kid genius to show that young girls can do anything anyone else can do (and sometimes, they’ll even do it better). Who run the world?

(Image via Shutterstock.)