Caleb Anderson
Super smart kids apply to Georgia Tech every year…but none like 12-year-old Caleb Anderson.
“I’m not really smart,” he told correspondent CBS reporter Mark Strassmann. “I just grasp information quickly. So, if I learn quicker, then I get ahead faster.”
This elite engineering school couldn’t believe they were recruiting him. Caleb saw the labs, and met the school’s president, Ángel Cabrera.
Professor Mark Costello, chair of Georgia Tech’s School of Aerospace Engineering, told Strassmann, “He’s a perfect candidate to come into our program and be very successful.”
“Is his admission guaranteed?” Strassmann asked.
“I would expect that he would be admitted, for sure,” he replied.
Caleb’s parents admitted to Strassman that nothing that he has done over his 12-years on earth has been ‘normal’ — but in a good way of course.
Caleb knew sign language by nine months. At age one, he was reading. At age two, he knew how to do fractions.
Caleb said, “I have this distinct memory of going to a first grade class and learning there, and everyone was way taller than me, because, you know, I was two. I could barely walk!”
Middle school was awful. “The kids there, they kind of looked down on me, they treated me like I was an anomaly,” Caleb said. “And I kind of am.”
He’s been studying aerospace engineering for a year at Chattahoochee Technical College in Marietta, Ga. If he stayed there, he’d be on track to graduate in two years. But his parents want a university that’s the right fit for a tween genius.
When Caleb was asked, “Does it ever occur to you, you know, ‘I’m looking at college and I’m 12 years old!?”
Caleb replied, “This is my life. This is how I am. And I’ve been living this way my whole life.”