This 12-Year-Old Could Be Cornell's Youngest Incoming Freshman Ever

Jeremy Shuler is not your average incoming Ivy-League freshman. For one thing, he’s a long way away from being old enough to drive a car, much less vote or buy beer. If he graduates in the usual four years, the 12-year-old could be the youngest Cornell University graduate ever, as well as its youngest incoming freshman, according to The Washington Post.

Shuler was reading in both English and Korean by age 2, and was sailing through pre-calculus at age 5. His parents, both aerospace engineers in Texas, realized that standard educational curriculums just weren’t going to work for him. He devoured entire encyclopedias, and his mother—who quit working to focus on Jeremy’s beyond-his-years educational needs—describes her role in his homeschooling as more of a guiding process than actual teaching.

Courtesy Shuler family via Texas Tech University

At 8, his family moved to England, and he spent his time planning trips for them and learning the languages and cultures of the places they traveled in Europe, putting his formal studies on hold. He later returned to the States and enrolled in the Texas Tech University Independent School District, where he studied web design, music history, astronomy, and more. He aced seven different AP exams, and in 2014, scored in the 99.6 percentile on his SATs.

At Cornell, he plans to major in engineering and minor in math. But don’t worry, his college experience won’t be a pre-teen version of 1970s film Animal House. His parents will be moving with him, and his grandfather is already a professor there. His mom will help him find his classes and navigate campus for his first few weeks of school. It’ll be more than just an academic change, after all.

“He will have to realize that he may not be the smartest person in the classroom anymore, but that will help him grow,” Andy Shuler, his father, told Texas Tech University’s news department. “If he’s up for the challenge, I think it will be good for him.”

[h/t The Washington Post]

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