6-Year-Old Boy Becomes New Mensa Inductee

The boy joins the high-IQ society with aspirations to become a medical doctor so he can "help people when they are sick."

Six-year-old Chandler Hughes of Texas has accomplished something remarkable for his young age—he was recently admitted as one of the youngest ever members of Mensa, a society for people with exceptionally high IQs.

Chandler is part of a special “fraternity of people who are essentially geniuses,” his family told KPRC.

“It started early,” his father said of the boy who “started reading at one year, nine months.” By age 2, Chandler was already reading and doing math at a second-grade level. He was enrolled in pre-kindergarten but was far ahead of his peers academically.

Now attending first grade at The Imani School, Chandler should technically still be in kindergarten, given his age.

Chandler is drawn to medicine and healing others, so it makes sense that he wants to be “a medical doctor, because I want to help people when they are sick,” he says.

While Hughes’ academic and reasoning abilities are exceptional for his age, his father emphasized the importance of continuing to advance his social skills as well. His school provides an excellent environment to thrive both intellectually and socially. With Chandler’s motivation to pursue medicine and his family’s support, this 6-year-old’s future looks bright.

“He’s in a great environment where his teachers, his peers all support him,” Chandler’s father said. “Just seeing how we can take this and increase literacy and math rates in our community, and for him to continue to succeed in life.”

Mensa works to foster a global community of bright individuals. The high-IQ society was founded in 1946 England by Roland Berrill and Dr. Lance Ware. The Latin name means “table” and represents its non-biased, roundtable membership. Its only requirement is that potential members score in the top 2% on standardized intelligence tests. With over 150,000 members across 90 countries, Mensa has three core goals: supporting human progress through intelligence; furthering research on intelligence; and providing an enriching social network for brilliant minds.