At first
glance Esther Okade seems like a normal 10-year-old. She loves dressing
up as Elsa from "Frozen," playing with Barbie dolls and going to the
park or shopping. But what makes the British-Nigerian youngster stand
out is the fact that she's also a university undergraduate.
Esther, from Walsall, an industrial town in the UK's West Midlands region, is one of the country's youngest college freshmen.
The talented
10-year-old enrolled at the Open University, a UK-based distance
learning college, in January and is already top of the class, having
recently scored 100% in a recent exam.
"It's so
interesting. It has the type of maths I love. It's real maths --
theories, complex numbers, all that type of stuff," she giggles. "It was
super easy. My mum taught me in a nice way."
She adds: "I
want to (finish the course) in two years. Then I'm going to do my PhD
in financial maths when I'm 13. I want to have my own bank by the time
I'm 15 because I like numbers and I like people and banking is a great
way to help people."
And in case people think her parents have pushed her into starting university early, Esther emphatically disagrees.
"I actually
wanted to start when I was seven. But my mum was like, "you're too
young, calm down." After three years of begging, mother Efe finally
agreed to explore the idea.
A marvelous mathematical mind
Esther has
always jumped ahead of her peers. She sat her first Math GSCE exam, a
British high school qualification, at Ounsdale High School in
Wolverhampton at just six, where she received a C-grade. A year later,
she outdid herself and got the A-grade she wanted. Then last year she
scored a B-grade when she sat the Math A-level exam.
Esther's
mother noticed her daughter's flair for figures shortly after she began
homeschooling her at the age of three. Initially, Esther's parents had
enrolled her in a private school but after a few short weeks, the pair
began noticing changes in the usually-vibrant youngster.
Efe says:
"One day we were coming back home and she burst out in tears and she
said 'I don't ever want to go back to that school -- they don't even let
me talk!'
"In the UK,
you don't have to start school until you are five. Education is not
compulsory until that age so I thought OK, we'll be doing little things
at home until then. Maybe by the time she's five she will change her
mind."
Efe started
by teaching basic number skills but Esther was miles ahead. By four, her
natural aptitude for maths had seen the eager student move on to
algebra and quadratic equations.
And Esther
isn't the only maths prodigy in the family. Her younger brother Isaiah,
6, will soon be sitting his first A-level exam in June.
Culled from CNN
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