Gifted boy, 13, enjoying uni life

Carine Chow

A 13-year-old prodigy has been admitted to City University's intelligent manufacturing engineering program after he attained straight A's in the General Certificate of Education Advanced Level exams.

The gifted boy, Sean Kong Ko-lun, was a grade 11 student from Hong Kong Baptist University Affiliated School Wong Kam Fai Secondary and Primary School.

Kong attained straight A's in five subjects - pure maths, further maths, physics, chemistry and biology - at the GCE A-Levels taken earlier this year.

The CityU program he was admitted to emphasizes the integration of intelligent manufacturing systems, artificial intelligence and robotics and aims to produce graduates who are capable of designing technology-based manufacturing and operations systems.

Parents of the boy started noticing his talents in maths when he was able to do multiplication and can recite the multiplication table at age two.

At age five, Kong was able to multiply two-digit numbers in his head. He was taken to do the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children a year later, in which he attained an overall score of 150.

His mother said Kong was capable of building websites when he was in primary school and wrote several applications including games and quizzes.

Thanks to his gifts, Kong has skipped grades five times since kindergarten and attended secondary five last year aged 12.

One month into his university life, Kong said he was not feeling "pressured" being admitted at a younger age.

"I feel like I interact with other students well because of my friendly manner so I feel accepted into the university life," he said, adding that he felt that he was "being treated like a normal university student."

He said most of "my spare time goes to programming" and added that he also enjoys reading and playing chess and would like to join the university's chess club.

Kong said he will focus on studying IT-related subjects in the future, but he is still undecided on the particular aspect that he would like to delve into.

He added that the Wong Kam Fai Secondary and Primary School has helped him prepare for his university life, including providing psychological support, and organizing workshops teaching him how to write better personal statements.

The deputy principal of the school, Claudia Liu Wing-ki, said the school has a three-tier implementation model for gifted education, given that the school is one of the three gifted education satellite centers of the Hong Kong Academy for Gifted Education.

"For a student who is talented in mathematics, if we find him or her suitable after our assessment, we might offer acceleration programs for them to mathematics of higher levels," she said.

Exceptionally gifted students may also be allowed to study extra training courses offered by institutes such as the Hong Kong Academy for Gifted Education and some local universities.

But Kong's mother said the government's support for gifted children was not enough and hoped authorities will devote more resources for these children.

carine.chow@singtaonewscorp.com