12-year-old graduates high school, heads to Ivy League school

(KCBD) - Jeremy Shuler, a 12-year-old from Grand Prairie, Texas, recently graduated from Texas Tech University Independent School District with his high school diploma and will begin college this fall at Cornell University, according to an article from Texas Tech Today.

Jeremy enjoys playing Minecraft and his favorite things are reading books like the "Divergent" series, "Diary of a Wimpy Kid," math books, watching "Cosmos" and traveling with his family.

A few months ago, he visited Texas Tech University for his graduation from Texas Tech University Independent School District. TTUISD is a flexible online education program that allows K-12 students to earn credits at their own pace.

Jeremy is the son of two aerospace engineers and they say he reached milestones quicker than the average child. He began to speak at 6 months, he could name certain things at 8 months, and at 18 months he could read Korean.

By the time he was 2 years old, he had learned both Korean and English languages and could read. At 8 years old, he was working on high school curriculum.

"Early on we realized Jeremy wasn't really ordinary," said Harrey, Jeremy's mother in an interview with Texas Tech Today. "We briefly considered sending him to a charter school or a school for the gifted and talented, but in the end there wasn't much of a choice because he was way too advanced to be enrolled in any traditional schools. So I quit my career to dedicate my time to teaching Jeremy myself. I have been homeschooling him ever since."

Harrey has her doctorate in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas - Austin. She helped Jeremy with his studies, but she didn't have to help him with chemistry. He taught it to himself.

Jeremy completed his high school courses and was ready for college, but to get into college he needed a high school diploma or a GED, but he couldn't get his GED because he wasn't 18.

Jeremy's parents began researching other education programs and found TTUISD.

"I really enjoyed TTUISD because it allowed me to get an actual high school diploma to be able to go to college, but it had the flexibility we needed for me to finish school. Overall, it made me a lot more experienced and prepared me for college," said Jeremy.

At the age of 10, Jeremy began preparing for college by taking the SAT and advanced placement (AP) exams. Jeremy took the SAT exams in 2014, placing in the 99.6 percentile for all college-bound seniors that year. Jeremy's parents said he did better than they expected, but his elite-level success was one of the reasons they thought he was ready for college in the near future.

Jeremy also took seven AP exams and aced them all, receiving college credit in calculus, chemistry, mechanics, electricity and magnetism, statistics, microeconomics and macroeconomics. He was awarded AP Scholar with Distinction from the College Board for his effort in the seven exams.

In the fall of 2015, Jeremy began applying to various schools, including Cornell University, where his father Andy earned an engineering degree. He was admitted to Cornell Engineering in March through the regular admissions process with special consideration given to his level of maturity and with the condition that his parents move to Ithaca to live with him.

"I was excited when I found out I got accepted to Cornell," Jeremy said. "It is the best choice for me."

When the acceptance letter came, Andy and Harrey were grateful to the university for being willing to take the chance on a 12-year-old boy. He won't be living the life of an average college student, though. Because of his age, he is required to live at home with his family throughout his college years. His family has plans to live near the campus so Jeremy can walk to and from class every day.

Jeremy plans to major in applied and engineering physics and minor in mathematics, just like his parents did.

In the fall, he plans to take multivariable calculus, physics in mechanics and spatial relativity, Introduction to Computing with MATLAB and introduction to linguistics or intermediate Latin.

Jeremy plans to graduate with his doctorate degree before he turns 21.

Besides college, Jeremy is working to develop a radar signal encoding algorithm using Costas Array based on Sophie Germain prime numbers.

Copyright 2016 KCBD. All rights reserved. Information provided by Texas Tech Today.