A 2-year-old genius girl named Kashe Quest who hails from California, United States has become the youngest American to join the organization of people with high IQ – Mensa, after scoring over 98% on her entry test.
Kashe, now 4, joined the organization in 2021 with an IQ grade of 146. Mensa is an organization of intelligent persons across the world. To qualify for Mensa membership, applicants must take an approved intelligence test and score at or above the 98th percentile.
Kashe took the test and aced all the questions thrown at her. Sukhjit Athwal, Kashe’s mom told GMA that “By 18 months, she had mastered pretty much the alphabet, numbers, colors, shapes … and then that’s when we started noticing this is pretty advanced for her age.”
Athwal who has a background in education had learning resources readily available around her family’s home, but never pushed Kashe in any particular direction.
“The way we’ve implemented her learning is we’ve never really forced her to sit down and do anything — it was out of her natural curiosity,” she said.
According to her parents, Kashe memorized the 50 states in the United States by shape and location and could name all of the elements on the periodic table by the time she was 2 years old.
“That’s when we were encouraged to explore our options in terms of getting her tested. It’s pretty amazing what she’s doing at this point in time and how fast she’s grasping concepts.” Athwal said.
Although exact details of the Mensa’s IQ test are not made public, Athwal said it was age performative and Kashe was continually tested until the materials either became challenging or she failed to determine her score.
“It was working on receptive memory, cognitive s𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁s and logical reasoning. It wasn’t necessarily, ‘What color is this?’ It was working on more of what her mental capacity was like.” Athwal said.
