At 12 years old, most of us were adjusting to middle school and worrying about BO. At 12, Carlos Antonio Santamaría Díaz’s life is looking a little different. The young Mexican savant will begin studying biomedical physics at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, becoming the first child to accomplish this at the university.
Carlos, who had already taken a a biochemistry and molecular biology course at UNAM, recently scored 105 on an entrance exam to the school. Just getting to this moment was a challenge. “[The biggest difficulty] was my parents persuading people to allow me to take exams for middle and high school, because they said it was surely a tall tale,” he said, according to El Universal.
But after those hurdles, the young student had another one before him: the difficult entrance exam, particularly integral calculus. But he refused to give up. “There’s always a way in,” he said. “I also studied on the internet, that’s how I learned biology and calculus, but on top of that you need to have all your family’s support. My parents have done more than me, they’ve prepared everything for me, and I only study and pass the exams.”
Watch him tell his story in his own words below.
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