The 12-year-old whiz kid who graduated from a Long Island high school this week said Thursday he has a message for young New Yorkers: Work hard for your dream.
Suborno “Isaac” Bari — who on Wednesday became the youngest student ever to earn a diploma from Malverne High School — said he worked his “butt off” to skip multiple grades and earn a full ride from New York University.
“It was easy for me to wake up every day and think, I mean, ‘Should I just stop here?’” he told The Post of his grind mindset.
“So I mean to young New Yorkers, I think that you should keep that goal in your head —whatever your goal is — whether it’s to understand the universe or something else,” he urged.
“You should keep that goal in your head and never step back on your work. You’re always one step closer to the finish line.”
He said his ultimate goal was “to better my understanding of math and science every single day” — so he stepped up his studying by taking classes at Stony Brook University and City College.
While he’s a gifted academic, Bari — who has already written two books and taught college classes in India — said hard work trumps talent.
“Maybe I make it look easy, but it is the farthest thing you could get from easy,” he said. “Throughout ninth grade I was already working my butt off, trying to get through every single course, handle all the homework, and responsibilities.”
“I was going to high school full-time [and] trying to handle all that moving between different classes, it was just an absolute mess,” he said. “In 12th grade I kind of got my stuff back together.”
The boy genius — who also set a world record for scoring 1500 on the SAT at age 11 — was met with cheers from the audience as he accepted his diploma during the school’s graduation ceremony, he said.
“When I was walking across the stage, I heard lots of cheering, and that really made me feel welcomed,” he said.
To celebrate, he had a special dinner with his grandparents.
When applying to colleges, he said he was turned down by some Ivy Leagues because it’s mandatory for first year students to live on campus — and he’s too young for that .
He now wants to major in math and physics at NYU, where he plans to earn his bachelors degree by age 14.
“It’s the start of a new chapter in my life,” he said. “Hopefully I can finish my PhD by the age of 16.”
His father, Rashidul Bari, said he and the boy’s mother, Shaheda, are “so proud” of their son’s academic drive.
Earlier this month, the child prodigy traveled to the Indian embassy to meet with the Consul General of India to New York to “talk about my graduation and what the future might hold,” he said.
