Talent
German child prodigy studies at New York’s elite university
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| Reading time: 5 minutes
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Shahab Gharib and his father Bardia in front of Pace University in New York. The 13-year-old is one of the youngest students in the university’s history.
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Photo: Christina Horsten / dpa
Shahab Gharib is only 13 years old and already a student at a renowned US university. What makes the teenager so special.
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New York. According to his father, Shahab Gharib is “a perfectly ordinary 13-year-old with a gift for learning.” The boy likes to play along Playmobil, watches films or goes to a museum with his parents. However, Shahab prefers to sit at his desk and study.
Papa Bardia was this Couching Previously suspicious, the sporty man warned: “Go out, have fun, don’t sit inside all day.” In the meantime, he has come to terms with the fact that his son is a special child: After graduating from high school at the age of twelve, he went to university he is now at a model university in New York.
Already in the primary school Shahab Gharib always finished all tasks before his classmates. “That’s why I always read my way through all the libraries,” explains the 13-year-old who was born in Bruchsal in Baden-Württemberg and moved to Florida with his parents as a toddler.
Shahab Gharib: As a fourth grader in a gifted school
“Every day I came home and said: Today I read three books, today I read four books,” remembers Shahab. The “Harry PotterHe already had all of them in first grade. “When he said he wanted to read my books, I said: You can’t do that, you are still much too young, that’s a secret language,” says Father Bardia.
“Of course he then taught himself to read. I gave him a couple Tricks showed how to recognize letters, and a few weeks later he pulled the first books off the shelf. He was maybe three then. “
Only when Shahab was in fourth grade with someone who was twice their age children The nationwide test ended up in the top thousandth, the father realized: “That was the breakthrough for me. I thought something was wrong with the guy, ”he says. “We were really a bit proud of that.”
Shahab switched to one in Florida Gifted school, got all his subjects with top marks, also took online courses, and finally graduated from high school last year – at an age, mind you, when other kids haven’t even started high school.
Youngest student at New York’s elite university
He then applied to numerous universities. Shahab, who turned 13 in February, has been studying at the renowned since this spring New Yorker Pace University – as one of the youngest students in the history of the educational institution, even if not the very youngest, as the university reports.
The age of his son made the applications much more complicated, says the father. Among other things, because if you are less than 13 years old you don’t even have one Internet profile for the necessary admission tests. Several universities rejected Shahab’s application, but Pace University accepted the offer the day before Christmas.
more on the subject: Eight-year-old Dutchman is considered Einstein Junior
“We couldn’t get out of the grin and go out to celebrate together,” said Bardia Gharib. Thanks to numerous scholarships, studying for Shahab only costs several thousand dollars per semester. It has been agreed with the university that the father accompanies the son as a kind of supervision and takes legal responsibility.
His parents moved to New York for him
History is now Shahab’s major, and he is also attending – partly in the university building in south Manhattan, partly because of the pandemic at home on the computer – including courses in economics, psychology, Egyptology and poetry. “I have a lot of fun,” says Shahab. With his fellow students, some of whom are much older, everything is “completely normal”.
His parents support him and moved from Florida to New York especially so that he can go to a good university. Mama Amorita found a job in the metropolis as Nurse. Papa Bardia used to run a boxing center between Karlsruhe and Heidelberg. “We are very proud of him,” says the father. “But we also see in him the lousy louse that he is.”
Shahab says he cannot explain why he is so much faster academically than most other children. “I think a lot is genetics, I just have a clever father and a clever mother.” Was there anything he couldn’t do? Yes, answers the German Wunderkind – a Instrument play.
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