As a fourth-year physics major with a math minor, 13-year-old Elliott Tanner is on the verge of graduating yet remains one of the youngest students at the University of Minnesota.
"Sometimes there is sort of a ‘wow’ period for a week or two and then everyone just kinda gets used to seeing me in class, and it becomes a normal occurrence," Tanner told FOX 9.
Elliott says he wants to be a high-energy theoretical physicist and ultimately a professor of physics at the University of Minnesota. His mom, Michelle Tanner, says he started reading and doing math by age 3. A few years of homeschooling, and he tore through the high school curriculum when he was ages 7 and 8, and started college at 9-years-old.
"People who hear Elliott’s story say he doesn’t get to be a kid, or he grew up too fast," Michelle said. "He still very much is a kid and the only difference is he goes to school in a different building."
LOOK BACK: FOX 9 talked with Elliott in 2020 when he was just 11 years old and earning an associate degree
Looking toward the future Elliott has now been accepted into the University of Minnesota’s Physics PhD program, and now his parents are trying to figure out how to pay for it.
"We're just trying to explore all our options, and coming up with dead ends," Michelle said. Trying to apply for any scholarships, fellowships, grants, and we have not been successful."
The tanners are trying a GoFundMe fundraiser to help with Elliott's graduate school tuition.
In the meantime, like any student on the verge of graduating, he's proud and excited for his next chapter.
"Incredibly," says Elliott. "It’s just been an amazing rollercoaster."
somethingmore24 on April 23rd, 2022 at 02:34 UTC »
Not 100% confident, but pretty sure I attended a remote summer camp with this kid during quarantine. Same name, looked the same, right age, and said he was attending college courses.
I didn’t believe him because he was super annoying and kept using the annotation tools to draw on the zoom meeting while people were talking.
stanleycrane on April 23rd, 2022 at 01:48 UTC »
Honest question here - I understand that kids like him are smart enough to learn everything up to a PhD level at just 13 years old. However, how has he had enough *time* to be able to learn all of the material that is covered in a high school and four-year college education? Has he simply been skipping other subjects in order to focus on STEM classes?
To phrase it another way, what makes him be able to just skip past 8+ semesters of high school classes and 8+ semesters of college lectures and labs even if he does absorb the material better than the rest of us? Does he literally spend every waking hour of his life studying like he's doing some wacky homeschool version of higher education?
indigogibni on April 23rd, 2022 at 00:17 UTC »
“…will be one of the youngest to graduate from the University of Minnesota.”
Not THE youngest. And just that one university. How common is this?