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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.”

Even though she loves physics and computer science, Priyamvada wants to pursue humanities and literature in university, five years down the line.

Within the US, awardees come from all 50 US states. Less than 20 per cent of CTY Talent Search participants qualified for CTY High Honours Awards.

Besides the recognition, honorees also qualified for CTY’s online and summer programmes, through which bright students from around the world can form a community.

Though she wasn’t able to get her certificates right away because of Covid-19, Priyamvada kept going and attended an English literature programme at Johns Hopkins Centre for Talented Youth.

She studied the art and science in literary writing and completed the course, scoring an A. She also topped the second level of asset talent examination, which also qualified her for summer programme at Northwestern University this year, where she is learning about world building in fiction writing.

“We are thrilled to celebrate these students. In a year that was anything but ordinary, their love of learning shined through, and we are excited to help cultivate their growth as scholars and citizens throughout high school, college, and beyond,” Virginia Roach, CTY’s executive director, said in a statement.

saman@khaleejtimes.com

• Dubai