MANILA, Philippines – “Linda Walker who?”
Netizens expressed admiration for beauty queen Rabiya Mateo after she revealed that she obtained an impressive score in the National Medical Admission Test (NMAT), earning a General Performance Score (GPS) of 741.
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| Photo courtesy: Rabiya Mateo (Facebook), Cup of Drama (YouTube) |
Mateo shared the achievement through her Instagram Story on March 10, where she reposted an art card showing her official NMAT result. The score immediately caught the attention of fans online, as a 741 GPS is considered remarkably high in the standardized test required for admission to medical schools in the Philippines.
The NMAT measures an examinee’s aptitude for medical studies and is scored using a GPS ranging from 200 to 800, along with a percentile ranking that compares the performance of test-takers nationwide. Mateo’s 741 placed her within the top 1 percent of examinees across the country.
The result also sparked playful comparisons among netizens with the fictional character Linda Walker, who recently went viral online for supposedly achieving a 719 score in a mock exam in the web drama “The Heiress Who Won with Brains” starring Chinese actress Zhang Yingfei.
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| Photo courtesy: Rabiya Mateo (Instagram) |
With Mateo’s higher score, many social media users jokingly declared that the real-life beauty queen had “outperformed” the trending fictional genius.
Before entering the world of pageantry and entertainment, Mateo completed a Bachelor of Science in Physical Therapy degree at Iloilo Doctors’ College in 2018, graduating cum laude.
She later represented the Philippines in Miss Universe 2020, where she reached the Top 21.
In a recent interview on the YouTube channel of DJ Chacha, Mateo shared that she intends to return to medical school to pursue her long-time dream of becoming a doctor.
With her NMAT score now making waves online, supporters say the beauty queen is proving that beauty and brains can truly go hand in hand.
— The Summit Express