Cape Town - While most matric pupils are starting their final exams today, Thomas Orton has already started university.
In fact the 18-year-old Bishops pupil from Tokai started his tertiary education several months ago and has been swopping his uniform for civvies halfway through the school day and hopping on to the Jammie shuttle for classes at UCT.
He was allowed to enter university because he has completed his A-levels in several subjects and is not writing the National Senior Certificate exams. The A-levels are usually written by students in the UK as a school leaving qualification and can be written at a few schools in the Western Cape.
“I don’t know why but I just got interested in them (A-levels). So from Grade 9 I started doing a couple for fun in my free time. I would just buy the text book and then two or three months before the exams I would just read over it.”
Orton said that because he had passed his A-levels in further maths, UCT gave him a credit for first-year maths and allowed him to do a second-year maths course. He is also doing a second-year physics course.
And if school and university life wasn’t enough to fit into his busy schedule Orton also won the Programming Olympiad, scooped the top spot in physical science in the national Science Olympiad and a gold medal in the English Olympiad.
He travelled overseas three times this year, including once to participate in the London International Youth Science Forum.
Academics are not his only interest. He is also a keen hockey player, plays the piano and achieved provincial colours in debating.
Asked what his future plans were, Orton said that for his undergraduate studies he was not planning on focusing on a specific career but was more interested in “a broad-based education”.
He said one of his interests was artificial intelligence.
“I like the idea of one day having super intelligent machines that can solve lots of problems.”
Cape Argus