Nine-year-old graduates high school after taking accelerated course
Joe Harker
Featured Image Credit: WBNS
A Mensa member is headed for college after successfully graduating from high school at the young age of just nine years old.
Pennsylvania boy David Balogun has already begun his college education before even hitting 10 years of age and has his sights set on the stars.
David's parents Henry and Ronya said their son was 'extremely curious about knowing things', which his dad said 'prepared him' for his academic success, and now he'll get to know plenty more as he continues his education at college.
His mom said 'the word proud is not enough at all for that', with David also being the recipient of the 2022 Distinguished Student Award from the Pennsylvania Association of Gifted Education.
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In his free time, when he's not absolutely smashing his way through the world of education, he enjoys baseball, karate and playing with his sister.
Speaking to Fox 43, David explained that he worked out that he could get through high school at an incredibly young age if he put the work in.
He hopes others will follow in his footsteps and said there was an 'opportunity to show that I’m not the only one who can do this'.
He said: "I realized that I [was] able to graduate at the age of ten or nine as long as I put the effort in, and with the help of my mom, dad and, of course, Reach Cyber Charter School I was able to graduate.
"I wanted to do it because I had the ability to do it. So why not use those abilities for the greater good? I want to be an astrophysicist, and study black holes and supernovas."
The nine-year-old will officially receive his high school diploma in June.
A member of Mensa, the nine-year-old boy has been enrolled in Bucks County Community College and has already begun taking classes there.
Mensa has several other child geniuses to keep David company, with their youngest member joining when she was a two-year-old after her parents decided to give her an IQ test when she started accurately naming objects around the house.
Some of the kids in Mensa have got IQs higher than famous geniuses like Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, with the benchmark for 'genius' set at 140 points.
David is following in the footsteps of other child geniuses who have graduated from school at a young age such as Mike Wimmer, who graduated from high school and college in the span of a week as a 12-year-old.
Some young geniuses have also managed to set themselves up for life, with Benyamin Ahmed earning $400,000 from two months worth of coding work when he was a 12-year-old.