He got a bachelor’s degree from TCU at 14. Now he’s graduating with a master’s at 17.
Carson Huey-You, the youngest person to graduate from TCU with a bachelor’s degree, is about to take another leap in his academic career.
He will earn his master’s in physics at age 17 and will be one of 738 TCU students to walk the stage Dec. 21.
The young prodigy has been studying at TCU since he was 11, achieving his bachelor’s at 14. Home-schooled from before he could sit up on his own until he was 5, Carson has always shown a talent for science and math, his mother said.
“I’ve known since I was young that I wanted to do physics,” Carson said. “It started when I was watching ‘Bill Nye the Science Guy’ when I was home-schooled. There was never any question about it, no going back and forth with things like ‘I want to be a doctor’ to ‘I want to be a physicist,’ to ‘I want to be a firefighter.’”
And he’s not the only one. Younger brother Cannan Huey-You, a 14-year-old electrical engineering major, is a junior at TCU. When he graduates, he plans to follow in his older brother’s footsteps and pursue a master’s in physics.
Carson’s academic journey started in earnest at 5 years old, when he was at an eighth-grade level in every subject and his mother couldn’t find a school willing to let him study at that level.
“They were afraid the other eighth-graders would eat him alive, and honestly I was a little worried about that, too,” Claretta Kimp, the boys’ mother, said.
Unwilling to let her son be held back, Kimp kept searching until she found Accommodated Learning Academy, a private Christian school in Grapevine that accepted him.
“They were a small school, so they were happy to take him in,” she said.
Kimp, who has a background in early childhood education, said before her children could even sit up on their own, she would use pillows to help them sit up straight on the couch as she taught them colors and numbers.
Despite his level of education at such a young age, Carson said he’s rarely been treated differently because of his age.
“Everyone has always treated me as a peer,” Carson said. “There have, of course, been outliers here and there, but for the most part, I’ve just been treated as another student.”
While he received offers to transfer to prestigious universities after receiving his undergraduate degree, Carson decided to stay at TCU because of his experience there.
Carson’s mentor, adviser and occasional teacher, Magnus Rittby, said Carson does it on his own, too.
“He’s brilliant,” Rittby said.
Carson’s research project looks at quantum physics and the way light interacts with molecules. Rittby said he advised and instructed as he would any other student, but Carson did not receive any special treatment.
Kimp said Rittby is a perfectionist, especially with her kids. He expects a lot from them, and Kimp credits their success in part to him.
“This has been a really great experience,” Carson said. “We looked at different schools, but this was the best program we could find. They’ve been accommodating, but at the same time, we’ve have the same level of difficulty as any other student.”
Carson hopes to get his doctorate in quantum physics and work as a researcher, either with a university or in the private sector. If he works at a university, he said he would also like to teach.
Rittby said the experience has taught him a lot, too.
“It’s been an adventure,” he said.
This story was originally published December 21, 2019 at 5:00 AM.