Boy genius, 13, accepted to HKU

A 13-year-old boy genius from HKFYG Lee Shau Kee College in Tin Shui Wai has been accepted by University of Hong Kong, making him possibly the youngest student admitted to the city's top university.

Secondary three student Peter Liu from the direct subsidy school has been admitted to the bachelor of engineering in engineering science program, according to the college's principal Lin Chun-pong.

Liu had outstanding results in the International Advanced Levels exam, scoring the top A* levels in mathematics and advanced mathematics and A in physics. He had twice skipped grades.

Liu was admitted to HKU outside the Joint University Programmes Admissions System.

When he was in primary six, he finished the mathematics curriculum for junior secondary school levels in the first school term and completed senior secondary maths in the second term. He mastered calculus when he was a secondary one student.

Apart from HKU, another university had also offered him a place.

An HKU spokesman said: "When admitting students, age is not a key concern. In the past, HKU has also taken in students younger than the average admission age."

In 2013, secondary six student Tsz Cho-ho from HKFYG Lee Shau Kee College became the school's first top scorer with seven 5** levels in his Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education exam.

In 2012, 14-year-old Joseph Ng Kwok-chung enrolled in HKU's chemistry program with three As in physics, chemistry and pure mathematics in the city's last A-Levels exam in history.

Last year, 13-year-old Sean Kong Ko-lun from Hong Kong Baptist University Affiliated School Wong Kam Fai Secondary and Primary School received outstanding results from the General Certificate of Education Advanced Level exams after changing schools and skipping several grades.

In 2007, March Tian Boedihardjo became the youngest university student in Hong Kong at the age of nine when he finished his GCE A-Level exams after attending Greene's College Oxford.

Boedihardjo graduated from Baptist University with a bachelor of science degree in mathematical science and a master of philosophy in mathematics in 2011, completing the special five-year curriculum designed for him one year earlier.

At 18, Boedihardjo studied at Texas A&M University as a visiting scholar and then as a PhD student and then became assistant adjunct professor at University of California, Los Angeles, in 2017.