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At only ten years of age, Mexican Michelle Arellano, a girl from southeastern Mexico with an IQ of 158 —only two points below Albert Einstein— will study medicine at the University of Massachusetts.
Arellano, a native of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, capital of the state of Chiapas, is considered a genius girl and dreams of becoming a doctor, marine biologist, and actress, she told EFE in an interview on Monday.
“My dream is to become a great doctor and be able to cure cancer and autism, and be a marine biologist and actress,” she said.
When she was a year and a half old, she learned to speak English and Spanish. By age four, she could read and write, and now she is fluent in French, Italian, and German.
She passed elementary school, middle school, and recently the National Center for the Evaluation of Higher Education (Ceneval) test to certify her high school diploma.
“I am happy because I have already passed elementary, junior high, and high school,” she says.
The little girl will begin her university studies in August. The first two years will be online classes and then in-person classes in the United States, says Karina Guillén Cruz, her mother.
Arellano also considers herself an artist. She draws, paints, plays the piano, excels in swimming and basketball, and is a black belt in taekwondo, among other disciplines.
Despite her talents, she is a child like any other; she plays with dolls, loves animals and paper origami, and is anxious to start her classes on August 29th.
Guillén Cruz, a surgeon, says that finding the way and understanding her daughter was distressing and frustrating.
She had to consult specialists and searched the Internet for similar cases but found little.
At the same time, she had to deal with the system. Her daughter was rejected from five elementary schools in Chiapas because they did not want to accept her because of her IQ. The schools argued that the teachers could not deal with her intelligence.
“It’s not easy either because you go to an institution, you come up against excuses, it’s this and that, it’s the age. The truth is that I put a lot of pressure on her,” says the mother.
She added that as soon as a school accepted her, her parents asked the Secretary of Education in Chiapas to move her up a grade because Arellano was bored in class. She learned everything in a couple of hours.
The Ministry of Education agreed to move her from fourth to sixth grade. Then, with a single evaluation, she accredited her elementary school in November 2021, her middle school in March 2022, and her high school on July 4.
Both parents are now looking for parents of gifted children similar to them to guide them and form a support network because the little girl wants everyone to have the opportunity to learn.
“They should talk to the parents so that the teachers know about these children and can help them with special classes,” says the girl.
