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17-year-old boy genius pursues PhD at US university

A 17-year-old prodigy from National Taiwan University (NTU) who became an NTU freshman at the age of 13 is scheduled to leave for the US later this month to pursue a doctorate, education officials said yesterday.

Lin Chien-yi (林建邑) from Kaohsiung County, the youngest university freshman in memory in Taiwan, decided to pursue a PhD at the Georgia Institute of Technology because he said that Georgia Tech has the graduate program that he liked the most.

He has also been accepted by Stanford University, Texas University at Austin and Purdue University.

Lin graduated from NTU's Electrical Engineering Department at a commencement ceremony held in Taipei Saturday after studying at the "top choice" department for four years -- a long time for a whiz-kid who only spent seven years finishing his elementary through high school education, which usually takes at least 12 years.

Lin's classmates at the NTU Electrical Engineering Department do not consider him childish. On the contrary, all of his NTU friends said that Lin is more sophisticated than most of his university peers, at least mentally, despite his age.

Besides, according to his friends, Lin is an independent kid who has seldom relied on his parents -- both of them teachers at junior high schools in Kaohsiung -- for their opinions or important decisions.

Lin, however, is just like every 17-year-old in Taiwan and is obsessed with video games in addition to his two other hobbies: playing the game "Go" and sleeping.

Lin, one year shy of completing his three-year course at Tainan First Senior High School, was allowed to take the Joint University Entrance Examination, receiving a remarkable score of 451.7 and earning himself entrance to NTU's Electrical Engineering Department in July 2001, becoming the youngest university freshman in Taiwan in the nation's 48-year history of the highly competitive joint university entrance examinations.

At that time, he said that the secret to his success in his studies was "preparing before class, concentrating during class and reviewing after class."
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