Girl Earns High School Diploma And College Degree By The Age Of 12

Published January 5, 2022

On our longest days, it's hard not to fantasize about how much easier things would be if we had a natural talent for everything.

While there's definitely a powerful sense of accomplishment to be had when we master something, there are so many times that the hours we put in to get that good seem both daunting and discouraging.

And that's probably why we find child prodigies so fascinating, impressive, and easy to envy all at once. And considering how many of us didn't like school growing up, that goes double when it comes to kids who can run up a lifetime's worth of academic accomplishments before they're even old enough to vote.

But as stories like the one we're about to go over often make clear, it's good to remember that one's person's idea of incredible is simply another person's idea of normal.

Moreover, it's a reminder that we can surprise even ourselves with what we can accomplish when we pursue our passions.

It wasn't long after 12-year-old Sawsan Ahmed's parents started homeschooling her that they discovered how gifted she is.

Getty Images | Image Source

According to Good Morning America, that became clear when the subjects that attracted her interest were often several years above her grade level.

As her mother Jeena Santos Ahmed said, "All of her education has pretty much been child-led. Whenever she shows an interest in something, we sort of dive into it and try to follow her interest as best that we can."

And since her parents have their own backgrounds in the sciences, it wasn't hard to let her in on their own reading material.

These advanced interests and the work Ahmed put into pursuing them led her to earn her high school diploma at the age of nine.

From there, she passed a readiness test that allowed her to take college level courses.

However, her parents initially limited her to one course per semester at Broward College so she didn't jump into the intensity of of post-secondary education with both feet.

But once so many of her other extracurricular activities were cancelled or moved online because of the pandemic, she took the opportunity to sign up for more classes.

And judging by how her perception in the eyes of her peers tended to change as those classes went on, it sounded like she adjusted well to the experience.

In Ahmed's words, "At the very beginning, everyone was helping me, calling me 'honey,' 'sweetie,' things like that. But by the end of the semester, all of the other students were asking me for help on questions."

And according to an assistant biology professor at the college named Amber Abels, her ability to adapt to the material was matched by her "exceptional" excitement to do lab work.

With that in mind, it's perhaps not so surprising that she would end up graduating from Broward College with an associate's degree and a 4.0 GPA even though she did it at the age of 12.

And her ambitions are lofty enough that it almost goes without saying that this is hardly the end of her academic road.

Indeed, she's already been accepted into the University of Florida, where she will start studying computer programming, chemistry and biology in the spring.

She's particularly looking forward to the school's courses in Python programming through biology and hopes to either attain a doctorate or an M.D. after earning her bachelor's degree.

And both she and her father Wesam have high hopes that she'll be able to make a difference in medicine.

In her words, "Physicians like my dad save lives one at a time, but if I invented technology that can work in medicine it could save many lives at once."

h/t: Good Morning America

Filed Under:

People & Society