Gifted 15-year-old gets accepted to University of Alberta

EDMONTON – Marcela Louie isn’t your typical teen. She’s been ahead of her peers since she was a toddler.

“She started reading newspaper headlines at the age of 18 months,” said her mother, Roxana Louie, “so because of that I knew that there was something different.”

By the time she was two, Roxana says her daughter knew she wanted to be a doctor. So the proud mom admits she’s not too surprised that Marcela was recently granted early admission to the University of Alberta, where she’ll be majoring in Biology this fall.

While she’s not the youngest student to be accepted to the U of A – an 11-year-old was admitted in 1980 – Marcela is one of only 22 15-year-olds to be admitted to the university since 1977.

“Honestly, it makes me feel privileged,” Marcela said. “I’m so lucky to have this opportunity, I’m going to take it and I’m going to do my best.”

She and her family realized she had a special talent long before she skipped two grades in junior high, or became a member of high IQ society Mensa Canada.

Currently a student at Tempo, a private school in the city’s southwest, her passion for learning began when she was a little girl.

“(At about age three), instead of reading the normal princess books, she was reading how the brain gets developed, how cells get mutated. And she loved it,” her mother said.

Marcela also enjoyed Harry Potter, and remembers reading the J.K Rowling novel to her classmates in kindergarten.

When it came to math, Roxana says her daughter started practicing her skills while the two played “supermarket” together, with the pre-schooler learning to make change from $10.

Soon enough, the standard zero to twelve multiplication tables began boring the child prodigy.

“So she decided to make her own. She went all the way up to, I don’t know, 62,” her mother said.

She adds that as a young girl,  Marcela was always full of questions – ones that her mother couldn’t always answer.

“I would be honest, ‘I don’t know, let me find out, help mommy research – bring the dictionary, the encylopaedias here…this is how we find the answer.

“And she developed those skills and now she’s exemplified them to the point that she is who she is.”

Now, while other kids her age might spend their time listening to Justin Bieber, she prefers playing Beethoven. She also enjoys Nintendo, drawing, and chess. As for T.V., she usually sticks to the Food Network and Discovery Channel; the high-brow comedy sitcom, Frasier, is also among her favourites.

Her passion, though, is science; and she’s hoping to use it to give back.

“I want to be that person a patient comes to with their problem and I can say, ‘don’t worry, I’m here to help.'”

If all goes as planned, the teen should have her medical degree by the time she’s 24.

Follow @TrishKozicka

With files from Laurel Gregory, Global News