She Just Graduated From College And Is Starting Her Ph.D. — And She’s Only 18

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While many students have just graduated from high school, 18-year-old Nigeria native Nkechinyere Chidi-Ogbolu is not your typical teen.

Chidi-Ogbolu just graduated summa cum laude from Howard University with a degree in chemical engineering — making her the youngest person to graduate from Howard this year, and one of the youngest in Howard’s history.

But that’s not all for Chidi-Ogbolu.

She’s now preparing to start a Ph.D. program at the University of California-Davis after the summer ends. She’ll be studying biomedical engineering with a focus on creating and discovering new medicines.

“I’ve always been interested in the medical field,” she told USA TODAY College. “But I want to have a broader scale of impact than in treating patients one-on-one.”

Chidi-Ogbolu said she’s always been the youngest person in her classes. While most students from Nigeria graduate high school at the age of 16, Chidi-Ogbolu finished high school particularly early, at 14, since she skipped 5th grade and attended an accelerated high school.

After high school, she left Nigeria for America and enrolled full-time at Howard University, a historically black university and her first-choice school.

While she says she’s super busy, she does set aside free time to relax. “I love watching movies and series, especially Korean ones, and I like to sing and do karaoke,” she says.

Chidi-Ogbolu also has some advice for teens her age.

“Don’t limit yourself because you think you can’t do it or because no one you know had done it,” she advises. “You can always be the exception to the rule and end up being exceptional.”

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