Dubai: 12-year-old schoolgirl named among brightest in the world

Dubai - Priyamvada Deshmukh received the top honour for her exceptional performance in the school and college ability test.

A 12-year-old schoolgirl in Dubai has been named one of the brightest students in the world by a top university in the US.

Priyamvada Deshmukh, a student of GEMS Modern Academy Dubai, received the top honour for her exceptional performance in the school and college ability test (SCAT), which she took as part of the Johns Hopkins Centre for Talented Youth (CTY) Talent Search, the university said in a statement.

She was one of nearly 19,000 students from 84 countries who joined CTY in the 2019-21 edition of the search. CTY uses above-grade-level testing to identify advanced students from around the world and provide a clear picture of their true academic abilities.

In spring 2020, then Grade 6 student Priyamvada took the test, which was split into two sections, verbal and quantitative.

While she qualified in the quantitative section, her results in the verbal part levelled with the advanced Grade 10 performance, earning her the prestigious Johns Hopkins CTY ‘High Honours Award’.

Priyamvada received her much-awaited ‘High Honors’ pin this week, which she lovingly kept in front of her grandparents’ photograph as tribute to her roots, her parents said.

An aspiring author and an avid reader, the 12-year-old’s favourite hangout place is her school library.

“From a very young age, we noticed that Priyamvada was fond of reading any and every kind of book so we encouraged her to continue the habit,” the proud father Yashwant Deshmukh said.

“She then saw her brother, who is now in university, take talent assessment exams when he was in Grade 8, and that encouraged her to do the same. Her elder brother was among the first UAE students to have cleared the Duke University TIP (Talent Identification Programme) when he was in Class 8.”