Mensa's newest member is an 11-year-old boy from the UK
TUESDAY, APRIL 07, 2015 10:50 AM

Mensa is a high IQ society that welcomes members who are so intelligent that their IQ scores are in the top 2 percent of the population. The organization's newest member? An 11-year-old boy from the U.K. whose IQ score actually ranks in the top 1 percent in his country! Owen Dunn's IQ is measured at 162 points - for some context, famous physicist Albert Einstein's score was estimated to be around 160. 

Like many other boys his age, Owen is a big fan of video games and reading books. His mom says he was an early reader and talker when he was growing up and now "always has his head in a book," according to The Gazette.

Owen, who lives in Ingleby Barwick, was encouraged to take the famously difficult Mensa exam by his school after they saw his score from a Cognitive Abilities Test he'd taken after joining the Ingleby Manor Free School in September of 2014. His score on the CAT was literally off the charts. School administrators took him to Northumbria University in February, where he took the Mensa exam among a group of older people - many of whom commented on his young age. And even though he scored so highly, he didn't think he'd done well at all.

"I didn't think it had gone well - I thought I had done awful," Owen told the Gazette. "I was shocked but happy when I found out."

According to Owen, the examination consisted of two tests. One was a three-minute long quick test that contained 20 questions, while the other was two hours long. In order to join Mensa the tests would have had to prove Owen's IQ score was at least 148, and his score of 162 was well beyond that minimum.

Owen's mother Clare Dunn is, of course, very proud of her son. She says that while she always knew he was smart, she had no idea his intelligence was so far beyond average.

"I guess when you only have the one child, you don't have anything to compare them to so we just thought it was the norm," Dunn told the Gazette. "We are just so proud of him, though. It really is amazing what he has done."

Mensa has millions of members worldwide, ranging from 2 to 102 years of age. Owen joins the ranks of what the organization calls its "young Mensans," meaning any member who's under the age of 18.