Confessions of a boy genius

INside: What education did you receive growing up?
William Yu: My mother started teaching me when I was young, so I learned a lot of math and reading before I entered kindergarten. I went to a regular public school. In fifth grade, my teacher told my parents that there was no more material at that level for me to take, so they had me take a placement test. They ended up moving me up two grades.

INside: What’s your average class schedule like?
WY: This semester, I’m only taking 15 credit hours. In the past, I’ve averaged around 21 hours a semester, but the highest number I’ve ever taken was 23 hours. Since my freshman year, except for this semester, I’ve always taken at least 19 credit hours.

INside: You have several avenues to pursue. What are your career aspirations?
WY: Right now I’m applying to a number of M.D. and Ph.D. programs. I’m hoping to go into biomedical research. I’d like to go into doing computational modeling of cell-signaling pathways. I’ve still got many years of school ahead of me.

INside: What is it like being younger than your peers?
WY: I’ve sort of reached the age where, because people assume that I’m the same age as them, people usually don’t figure out that I’m a few years younger. Right now, as a senior, there are some things, like when my housemates are going out to the bars, which is something that I can’t do for a few more years. Really, college wasn’t that bad of an experience because the age difference wasn’t that noticeable. Back when I was in high school, of course, I was two feet shorter than everyone.

INside: What drives you?
WY: I’ve been described multiple times as being a truly curious kid. I really just like learning about really cool new things. Like whenever I’m learning about some new mathematics thing or whatever, sometimes it is just really beautiful at times. The world is a really beautiful place ... it’s sort of hard to describe. I feel a sense of beauty whenever I learn about something.

INside: Who are your role models or heroes?
WY: Probably some combination of Spock and Data from Star Trek, and Sherlock Holmes. Back when I was in middle school, I decided to be exactly like Spock. I spent my time learning how to focus on being completely rational. After I tried being
Spock, I sort of stunted some of my social growth, so I decided to take on Data as my role model instead. He is someone emotionless who is trying to become more human. And Sherlock Holmes just because he’s cool.

INside: What has been the most gratifying experience for you outside of academics?
WY: Learning to swing dance.