Cristopher Claeys started reading when he was 19 months old.
By first grade, he was devouring National Geographic, Popular Science magazine and Harry Potter books.
By sixth grade, he was studying high school geometry.
By eighth grade he’d earned a perfect 800 on the math portion of the SAT college entrance exam, and the highest score of 5 on the Advanced Placement calculus test and on the AP U.S. history test.
Now the 14-year-old ninth-grader is tackling college.
The Puyallup youth is one of the youngest students ever to attend the 18-year-old University of Washington Tacoma, said UWT spokesman Mike Wark. Another 14-year-old, Gi-Yung Kim, turned 15 within a few days of starting at the campus in fall 1998.
Cristopher began classes at UWT last fall. He and his parents, Annie Starwich-Claeys and Scott Claeys, say the teen is thriving in the collegiate atmosphere and UWT’s urban setting. He enjoys the energy of downtown Tacoma and visiting the nearby museums.
“People are nice. … They’re treating me like a normal student,” Cristopher said recently as he whisked through the campus plaza to catch a bus home and meet friends from Kalles Junior High. “The classes are more challenging than I think I would have gotten in high school.”
And he’s succeeding academically.
“He’s an outstanding student,” said instructor Menaka Abraham, who’s teaching Cristopher for a second quarter in JAVA programming. “I hope he stays in computer science. He has the aptitude for it; not everyone does.”
Even though he’s taking a full load at the university, the teen is considered a Kalles student in the Puyallup School District.
The district arranged for Cristopher to attend the UWT after his teachers encouraged him to take college entrance tests, his mother said. She and her husband dislike measuring kids by test scores, but when pressed, she said, he performed “very well” on the exams.
“He had gone beyond our course offerings, particularly in math and science,” said Jay Reifel, Puyallup’s assistant superintendent for student learning and instructional support.
Puyallup is paying about $4,300 to cover Cristopher’s tuition for two academic quarters a year. That’s the amount it pays for a high school student in the Running Start program, which allows teens to simultaneously earn high school and college credits by taking community college courses.
The district and his parents agreed that the university, with its upper-division courses, would be better than a two-year college for Cristopher.
“He has been thrilled with the classes,” said his father. “He read 100 pages of one of the books for a class before the quarter started.”
The university is covering Cristopher’s third academic quarter and provides a textbook allowance.
“His arrangement is very unique,” Wark said. “I don’t know that we’ve had another student who’s been here under a similar arrangement, where a school district is paying tuition.”
Though the UWT isn’t part of Running Start, Cristopher is choosing university courses that will fulfill Puyallup’s high school diploma requirements and count toward a college degree.
“We’re really pleased he’s still part of the Puyallup School District and we’re able to watch his climb through academia,” said Reifel, who cited the teen’s SAT and AP scores.
Keeping Cristopher challenged in school has proved formidable.
Teachers tried to meet his academic needs in the Quest program for highly capable students at Meeker Elementary, but he recalls being bored “a lot.” When he was in fifth and sixth grades, Quest teachers connected him with online algebra and geometry courses.
To keep him engaged, his parents buy plenty of books and educational software and play chess and other board games with him.
They regularly take Cristopher and siblings 5-year-old Jasper and 3-year-old Charlotte on cultural outings, said Starwich-Claeys, who herself started school at age 4 and graduated from high school at 16.
Cristopher says he doesn’t spend hours every night on homework. Be it a new math concept or a history essay, Cristopher said, “I only need to read something once and I get it.”
His favorite subject? “I like everything.”
Any subject he dislikes? “Stuff I already know.”
In seventh grade, he took several honors courses at Kalles. His mom shuttled him between Kalles and Puyallup High School every day for second-year algebra, a course normally taken in 11th grade.
In eighth grade, he split his time between Kalles and the high school, where he took physics, AP calculus and AP U.S. history.
Puyallup High math teacher Monique Vaswig said she was both excited and leery when she learned that Cristopher would be joining one of her algebra II classes when he was in seventh grade. She feared he might be like some of the gifted ninth-graders she’s previously taught in that course.
“They’re usually on the smart-aleck side or act silly because they’re immature,” she said. “He was nothing like that. He is so very mature for his age.”
She was amazed by his ability to solve in his head multiple-step problems that would take other students minutes to calculate. In fact, she had to teach him to show his work on paper. His only shortcoming, she said, was his “terrible” handwriting.
When he took her AP calculus course last school year, he astonished classmates by scoring close to 100 percent on the AP practice tests. Most kids score between 40 percent and 60 percent.
Thinking back to when he was her student, Vaswig said, “He had to have been so bored at times. He is so extremely gifted mathematically. … His mind is years ahead of his little body.”
Besides nourishing his intellect, the high school experience helped Cristopher get accustomed to being friends with older teens. He hasn’t felt intimidated sitting alongside 20-somethings and older students at UWT.
As for his parents sending their 14-year-old to college, “Obviously we were concerned, but we knew he was emotionally ready,” said his dad.
His mom notes that she and Cristopher are in regular cell phone contact when he’s on campus.
The slender, 6-foot teen blends in easily with his UWT classmates. In fact, neither instructor Abraham nor the students in his JAVA programming course realized he was 14 until they learned The News Tribune would visit the class.
“He does not seem like a 14-year-old in the way he behaves and talks. He didn’t look that old, so I thought maybe he was 17 or 18, not really 14,” said a friend in the class, Harpreet Singh, 20. “He’s probably the brightest student in the class.”
On Monday, Abraham gave a pop quiz and, as usual, Cristopher was the first one to finish. She said he’s a nice, humble youth, not prone to making small conversation.
“He doesn’t show off. He tries to help his friends,” she said. “He’s a very nice person.”
A nerd he is not.
He takes piano lessons and mixes music tracks on the computer. His iPod is loaded with the likes of Audioslave, Beck, Interpol and Nine Inch Nails. He skis downhill, hikes and bicycles long-distance.
He watches the Adult Swim network, “South Park,” “Seinfeld” and “MythBusters.” He’s active in a library group for teens. He’s going to the Kalles ninth-grade formal.
“He’s an amazing kid. He’s also just a kid, needs to be a kid, and to be around his peers,” his dad said. “Most of his friends are his age.”
Inevitably, people ask what’s his major or what career he wants to pursue. Cristopher tells them he hasn’t decided yet.
After all, he’s only 14.
Debby Abe: 253-597-8694
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