The University of California, Davis and Santa Cruz branches, have accepted a twelve-year-old student who already has three degrees behind his name. He might be enrolling for biomedical engineering but doesn't know which university he wants to attend. What he does know is that he has aspirations to become a doctor and medical researcher when he finishes his studies at the ripe age of eighteen-years-old. His name is Tanishq Abraham
"I think I'll be 18 when I get my MD," Tanishq told reporters.
It was earlier this year that a girl of 15 aimed for a bright career in engineering in South Africa. Tapiwa Shendelane was accepted into the Univeristy of Witswatersrand for her Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering after achieving six distinctions in her final year at school.
"I used to get 100% in tests all the time without even putting in an effort. Even in my matric year, I didn't expect to do as well as I did, because I did not put in an effort," she said to News 24. "Age means nothing to me. I believe that education creates success and I want to encourage every young person to work hard despite their circumstances."
You might be thinking: Twelve years old, fifteen years old, that is far too young for a child to have left school and start studying. However, they get even younger than that. Before the end of last year, the Independent reported a story about a boy named Ayan Qureshi who became the youngest qualified Microsoft Computer Specialist. He was five years old when he completed the exam at Birmingham University. The qualification includes a deep understanding of Microsoft operating systems and how they can be turned into networks and the technology behind them.
These children are on their way to becoming superstar engineers because they have the mind for it and the resilience to continue working towards careers in the industry. Most children get disinterested in engineering at a young age in what the Dean of the Engineering Institute of Technology calls the engineering valley of death. To ensure the disinterest of STEM subjects don't happen, nonprofit groups in the U.S. have started up. A group called 100Kin10 was founded back in 2011 and, according to Fortune, has trained 28,000 STEM teachers that will attempt to inspire students to continue pursuing their STEM career dreams.
The stories of children who are persevering through engineering at a young age are so rare and isolated that we almost never hear of them but when we do it makes us wonder about how we could keep children interested in STEM subjects and get them to have fruitful engineering careers in the future. One benefit for children would be having a parent who is already an engineer who show them how it is done and bring them up in an engineering household. However, children should dictate their own destinies but as is apparent, some kids decide from a young age that engineering excites them and they go on to achieve some amazing things.
