ULYSSES, Kan. (AP) A 16-year-old Kansas boy will soon earn his high school diploma and a few days later hell travel to Harvard to collect his bachelors degree.
Ulysses High School senior Braxton Moral will attend both commencement ceremonies in May, becoming the only student to successfully pursue a four-year high school degree and a bachelors degree from Harvard at the same time, The Hutchinson News reported.
Harvard has changed the rules, Braxtons father Carlos Moral said, so his son will be the one and only reaching that milestone. Braxton Moral will be 17 when he gets his diplomas.
Carlos Moral said they began to realize their son was special when he was in the third grade.
They told us: You need to do something. Hes not just gifted. Hes really, really gifted, he said.
Braxton Moral skipped the fourth grade.
The Ulysses school district allowed him to take some high school classes while he was still in middle school. Before high school he took a class offered at Fort Hays State University. Then he was admitted into Harvard.
Braxton Moral simultaneously studied at the high school and the Harvard Extension School. The program typically serves adults who work and cant attend classes on campus full time.
Ulysses High School math teacher Patsy Love served as the proctor for the Harvard program, administering Morals tests in Kansas. Moral spent the summer before his junior year at Harvards campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
We constantly are monitoring Braxton to make sure he is not too overwhelmed, said Julie Moral, Braxton Morals mother. No achievement is worth him being unhappy.
Braxton Moral is on track to graduate with a major in government and a minor in English.
Braxton Moral said he hopes to attend Harvard Law School next.
Politics is end game for me, he said, though hes still too young to vote.
