17-year-old to do PhD at Oxford

HONG KONG: Britain's Oxford University has agreed to enrol a 17-year-old from Hong Kong for one of its doctorate programmes, making him one of the famed university's youngest students, a report said on Wednesday.

Horatio Boedihardjo became an Oxford undergraduate at 14 and has now been admitted to the university's mathematics doctorate programme, the South China Morning Post said. Oxford PhD students are normally four to five years older when they begin their doctorates, yet despite the feat he faces stiff competition from his potentially even more precocious younger brother.

His sibling, March, last September became Hong Kong's youngest ever university student at the tender age of just nine, leading the report to dub Horatio Boedihardjo as the "prodigy's brother."

"I believe it is just a start for me, to change this good fortune into success in the future," the elder brother said, according to the report. He said he would use the opportunity to try and emulate the success of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, the report said.

-Times of India