The Teen Who Graduated College Before High School

Christian Townson decided to attend college while going to high school, and is able to graduate with an associate’s degree before his diploma.

By DAVID on May 18, 2018
(Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)

This is an awesome story. When Christian Townson was in 9th grade, he found out he could dual-enroll and take college courses and attend high school at the same time. So he figured why not, right? He, for 3 and a half years, took classes at college while also going to high school every day.

As a bonus while taking the college classes, they actually counted towards his regular high school credit too. He attended a community college in his town, and will be able to graduate that college the day before graduating high school. Christian saya “The teachers at Sylvania were great with helping me with my dual enrollment classes and the college teachers here were great at working around my high school schedule.” On top of all that, he actually finished up with his high school classes in December, spending much of the earlier portion of this year picking the right college.

So what does he have for degrees right now? Well, on top of the regular old high school diploma, he’s got an associate’s degree. He’s already planning an undergraduate program, and has 61 credit hours to use towards that. He applied for 21 different schools and took his time planning which one he was going to take the plunge on. He ended up picking the University of Alabama in his home state. His chosen course of study is pre-med. “I’m going to major in pre-medical that way I can study to go to medical school, so I can become an orthopedic surgeon,” he said. Now that’s a cool story! Suddenly my broadcasting degree seems inadequate. Before you go calling him a brainiac or anything like that, he says you don’t have to be smart to do that, just motivated. Pretty cool. Check out more on Christian here.

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