Fareedah Oyolola, a secondary school student at Greensprings School in Lagos, has been named one of the world’s brightest pupils by the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth.

This honor is based on her outstanding achievement on the advanced School and College Ability Test (SCAT), which every student must take for the school to assess their existing academic abilities before being admitted to its talent search program.

“The test was a multiple-choice aptitude test in verbal and quantitative reasoning, and I had to answer 100 questions within 44 minutes!” Fareedah said about the test. My verbal reasoning score was 92 percent, and my quantitative reasoning score was 87 percent at the end of the test.

“There’s no way I would have gotten these high scores with such a limited time window if not for the great work put in by my teachers, towards developing my comprehension abilities and mathematical reasoning skills. I am very grateful to them.”

The Executive Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, Virginia Roach, issued a statement congratulating Fareedah and other excellent students around the world. She said, “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.”

Fareedah’s honor was also praised by Mrs. Magdalene Okrikri, the secondary school principal at Greensprings Anthony campus. The principal, “This honor fills my heart with enormous joy,” she remarked. Fareedah’s success demonstrates that our Thinking School program benefits our students by assisting them in intellectually developing and enhancing their cognitive abilities.”

The Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth is a Johns Hopkins University project dedicated to the development of exceptional young brains. Nearly 19,000 students from 84 countries are enrolled in its 2020–2021 program. Fareedah and other international honorees will be attending a summer program in the United States or Hong Kong.