UK-based Pakistani girl makes history in GCSE exams

UK-based Pakistani girl makes history in GCSE exams

Pakistan

UK-based Pakistani girl makes history in GCSE exams

LONDON (Web Desk) – Mahnoor Cheema, a 16-year-old Pakistani-British student, has made a new record as she passed 34 subjects at the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) level.

Mahnoor appeared in the highest number of subjects ever taken by a student in the history of UK and EU GCSEs. She has passed 17 subjects with A* grades as a private candidate. However, on Thursday she added 17 more subjects to the bag — taking the total count to 34 and establishing a new milestone.

Mahnoor Cheema’s father, Barrister Usman Cheema, and mother, Tayyaba Cheema, hail from Pakistan's Lahore. They moved to the UK in 2006 in order to pursue further education at Lincoln’s Inn and SOAS, respectively, while Mahnoor joined Langley Grammar School in West London after having initially studied at a private Lahore school.

The exceptional Pakistani-origin student has set other records too.

Apart from her academia, Mahnoor’s IQ has also been recognised on a global scale, at 161 on the Mensa IQ Test, ahead of Albert Einstein, who is believed to have possessed an IQ of 160.

With this, she has earned her place among the top 1 percent of the world’s population for intellectual ability.

Mahnoor also completed ABRSM Music Theory and Practical at Grade 8, with distinction. She is one of the youngest individuals in the UK to be pursuing a music diploma.

She has also been shortlisted in the prestigious John Locke essay competition, with the awards ceremony in Oxford later this year.

Mahnoor harbours a deep passion for medicine and said that she wished to dedicate her life and work to helping humanity.

Owing to her ambitions to study medicine at the University of Oxford, she undertook the University Clinical Aptitude Test (UCAT) and the

Biomedical Admissions Test (BMAT) at the age of 15, falling in the 99th percentile of test-takers with a score of 3,290. Her passion for medicine, coupled with her outstanding track record, positions her as a promising future medical professional.

In an interview at her home, she explained as how she was able to achieve such stunning results: “I’m a highly driven individual. I’ve always understood that hard work would be required with aspirations like mine, and I’ve never backed down from a challenge.”

In 2009, Pakistani national Ali Moeen Nawazish had passed a record 23 A-Levels in a single year.