At 9, David Balogun becomes one of the youngest-ever high school graduates

His teachers and friends call him a computer programming and science whiz. At nine years old, David Balogun from Pennsylvania has become one of the youngest to graduate high school. 

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.

Balogun not too long ago 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, according to the local television station WGAL.

His education with Reach Cyber Charter School began in the third grade in 2020. “One thing that digital schools can do, that brick and mortar schools cannot catch up to, is that if you miss a lesson, you can still do it tomorrow. You can also go ahead of the plan, and that’s how I went faster,” said Balogun. “I finished 8th grade in two-and-a-half months. Then I started high school.”

Balogun is now one of the youngest known children to ever graduate high school, per a list compiled by the history and culture website, oldest.org. Michael Kearney still holds the Guinness World Record for the youngest high school graduate. Kearney achieved this in 1990 when he was only six years old. He went on to earn master’s degrees at 14 and 18 before winning over $1m on gameshows.

Balogun is now a student at Bucks County Community College and he is accumulating credits toward his college degree. Balogun’s parents, who both have advanced academic degrees, have 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,” said Balogun.

His parents agree that it’s not easy to let a child be on a college campus alone so they are thinking “seriously” about the next step.

In the meantime, Balogun is 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 told WGAL.