N.Y. DAILY NEWS, June 21, 2011—This fall, Autum Ashante will be like any other giddy freshman starting college, with one notable exception - she's 13 years old.
The Pelham Parkway teen has been accepted at the University of Connecticut, where she plans to study medicine.
"I know it's going to be hard, but I'm excited," she said.
Autum will move to Norwalk, Conn., with her father, Batin Ashante, later this summer, to be close to UConn.
"What she's doing is groundbreaking but this is not about vanity," he said. "It's about setting the tone for other black and Latino children who will come behind her. They're always being told they are underachievers. We want to show this can be done."
Petite and cheerful, Autum has always proved exceptional. She could walk at 10 months old; she could read at age 2 and by the time she was 3, she was writing and performing poetry.
By age 8, she reportedly had an IQ of 149 (the average college graduate has an IQ score of 115).
Her father took it all in stride.
"She would stand on stage and read a book and everyone used to marvel at that," he said. "I just thought 'How do I enhance this?' "
Ashante, a single father, chose to home-school his daughter and sought out retired teachers from the community to help tutor her.
Autum, who speaks Arabic, Swahili and Spanish, has never set foot in a classroom, but that's all right with her.
"My dad always says 'the world is a classroom.' I got to go places and do different things, so it never really is boring," she said.
Indeed, Autum keeps quite busy. She regularly performs spoken-word poems at different venues across the country; she does muay thai, a form of kickboxing and she is working on a photography/poetry book and a spoken-word album.
In her downtime, she likes to read mysteries, work out and "play around and be crazy" with her friends.
"She is a blessing from God," Ashante said. "All the things we've gotten to do together have been a blessing."
Raising a genius though, he said, has its challenges. The 50-year-old retired Corrections officer said he sometimes struggles to keep up with Autum's active mind.
"She tries to outthink me all the time," he laughed. "She's quick with it. You have to be sharp. She has me drinking ginkgo on the regular."
Posted By: Richard Kigel
Monday, June 27th 2011 at 1:13PM
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