David Balogun. Photo: WGAL-TV
By Face2Face Africa
At nine years old, David Balogun from Pennsylvania became one of the youngest to graduate high school. He received a diploma from Reach Cyber Charter School in his state’s capital of Harrisburg after taking classes remotely from his family home in Bensalem, local television station WGAL reported early this year.
The gifted boy became one of the youngest known children to ever graduate high school, per a list compiled by the history and culture website, oldest.org. Balogun’s education with Reach Cyber Charter School began in the third grade in 2020. He finished 8th grade in two-and-a-half months and then started high school.
In February this year, it was reported that he was a student at Bucks County Community College accumulating credits toward his college degree. Now the 10-year-old talented kid is studying at Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) after he earned a full tuition scholarship to pursue his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science and IT. Enrolling at just nine years old, Balogun is the youngest learner in the school’s 90-year history, the school said.
President of SNHU Paul LeBlanc said he is excited to welcome Balogun to the diverse SNHU community, adding that the child prodigy’s unique perspectives and contributions will enrich the culture of the university.
Balogun showed extreme intelligence as a toddler but it was when he was around six years old that his parents considered testing him for giftedness after he started asking about negative numbers. While many of his peers were not fully attached to studies and were watching cartoons, playing video games or doing sports, he was focused on his books, paying more attention to science and computer programming.
Today, his teachers and friends call him a computer programming and science whiz. After graduating high school earlier this year, his parents, who both have advanced academic degrees, had a tough decision to make concerning their son’s academic future. “Right now, we’re looking into ivy league colleges. We visited the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Harvard. But they all said, if I’m going to be living on campus, they’d have to assign me a caretaker (pause) a 9-year-old — on campus with 20-year-olds — with a caretaker,” Balogun said at the time ahead of joining SNHU.
His parents agree that it’s not easy to let a child be on a college campus alone so when Balogun’s aunt who had already started taking classes online at SNHU encouraged them to apply, they didn’t hesitate in doing so.
“SNHU also offers the best platform where David is not in class with other students that are … interested in many things that David is not interested in at all, and it’s not something that is on his radar, and I like to keep it that way,” Balogun’s mother Ronya said to the school.
Months ago while his parents had doubts about where he would attend college, Balogun was already sure about what he would like to do after school. “I want to be an astrophysicist, and I want to study black holes and supernovas,” he said to WGAL.