Youngest M.D., 21, Will Be Practicing Medicine While Your Kid is Majoring in Keggers

The youngest M.D. in the school’s history is set to graduate with his doctorate from the University of Chicago at the tender age of 21, a point in life where many kids are still struggling to settle on a major- if they haven’t had a few false starts in college as it is.

Sho Yano is barely old enough to legally have a beer, but this week the medical prodigy will snag his youngest M.D. honor from the Pritzker School of Medicine- where, incidentally, he also managed to achieve a Ph.D. in molecular genetics and cell biology. You know, on the side.

The soon-to-be Dr. Yano started pretty early, though- the youngest M.D. began reading at the age of two. And the newly minted young doctor was bored in a standard elementary and grade school track- so he got started on college at the age of nine. (And before they let him into college, he kept busy too, starting to write at the age of three and composing music by the time he was five.)

Of his staggering and somewhat intimidating achievements, Yano is non-plussed, and says:

“I never understood that… Why would being allowed to challenge yourself be considered more damaging that being totally bored?

Dr. Joel Scwab is a professor of pediatrics who was on the admissions committee when Yano got into medical school, and he recalls the then-child he met:

“I remember interviewing him… this nice, polite, 11-year-old boy, dressed in a little suit. He was never going to be among typical 11-year-olds, where his mother would drive him to Little League. He was going to be a doctor.”

According to HuffPo, Yang is currently “preparing for his residency in pediatric neurology.”