School Tells 8-Year-Old She's Arizona Material

The University of Arizona has asked an 8-year-old to consider going to college there—any time now. Adhara Pérez Sánchez of Mexico City already has graduated from high school and is working online toward two degrees there. She wants to study astrophysics at Arizona, the Arizona Republic reports. When the school's president read that, he sent the girl an invitation. "We have many outstanding space sciences programs, you would have many opportunities to work side by side with the world's leading experts," he wrote. Robert Robbins offered to put her in touch with the enrollment office, as well as faculty members in astronomy or the lunar and planetary sciences lab.

Nayeli Sánchez, took her daughter out of school after she was bullied; Adhara was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome when she was 3, per Mexico News Daily. Teachers had said Adhara wasn't working hard, but her mother noticed she was studying algebra and the periodic tables on her own. Now she's working on a smart bracelet to help other children with disabilities. Adhara would bring her IQ of 162, two points higher than Albert Einstein's and Stephen Hawking's, to Arizona. "I hope to welcome you on campus one day as a Wildcat," Robbins wrote. Her mother is thinking scholarship and expects to take Adhara to the U.S. for exams. "But first she has to take an intensive English course," her mother said. (A 9-year-old had a change of plans about college graduation.)