California boy, 12, graduates from college — with 5 degrees

A 12-year-old boy who wanted a challenge graduated from a California college last week, where he was presented with a historic five degrees.

The pre-teen, Clovis Hung, is the youngest person to graduate from Fullerton College, the university said.

Hung started attending the school in Fall 2020, when he was just nine years old and his mother had pulled him out of traditional public school claiming her son was highly self-motivated and goal-oriented.

“Clovis is super inquisitive, mature, diligent, self-disciplined, and highly motivated,” Hung’s mother, Song Choi, said in a statement released by the school. “He is also very curious and traditional public schools could not satisfy his curiosity, therefore, the best option was college.”

Fullerton offers “The Special Admit program” which allowed Hung to take courses at the school while he also completed the homeschool curriculum taught by his mother.

Hung was initially nervous about taking in-person college courses, but said he soon “instantly fell in love with college life. So, I challenged myself to take more classes.”

Some of Hung’s professors were worried the juvenile would be intimidated by his fellow classmates due to the age difference but were surprised at how well the more traditional college students took to Hung.

“At first, I was a little worried about how he would relate to the other students given the age and developmental differences, however, those concerns were unfounded,” Fullerton Biology Professor Kenneth Collins said. “ Clovis has been a great mixture of ‘kid’ and college student.  He is mature enough that the other students take him seriously, but enough of a kid that they look after him like a younger brother and cheer him on.”

“When I had questions, I asked them, and if they had questions, they’d ask me,” Hung told KABC. “They treated me like a little brother.”

Fullerton College is a public community college located in Orange County, approximately 30 miles from Los Angeles, and is a part of the California Community Colleges System.

After becoming acclimated to college life, Hung took more classes and eventually was accepted into the Honors Program, where he was able to “thrive.”

Hung, who graduated on May 20 along with Fullerton’s 900 other graduates received five Associate of Arts degrees in History, Social Sciences, Social Behavior and Self-Development, Arts and Human Expression, and Science and Mathematics.

The 12-year-old decided to attend Fullerton after then-13-year-old Jack Rico graduated from the school in the spring of 2020 with four associate degrees — Rico later graduated from UNLV in December 2021.

Hung was elected to be Senator for Associated Students for the upcoming school year, where he will be taking STEM courses before he begins applying to universities.

Outside of his academic achievements, Hung is looking to the sky for his next accomplishment.

Hung’s career goals include being an aerospace engineer, piloting, or pediatrics, according to ABC7.

“I feel really proud of what I’ve accomplished so far,” Hung said. “I also just joined the Civic Air Patrol and hope to get my pilot license at age 16.”