Ye Jianing (Photo/Zhejiang News)

Ye Jianing, a recent high school graduate from Zhuji, Zhejiang Province, received his official admission letter from Peking University. This is not a surprise for Ye and his family, as three years ago the university promised him a place in the School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science, even if he scored 200 points lower than the university’s admission threshold.

“Since primary school, Ye Jianing has been a top student. His interest in programming started in middle school,” said Yu Jun, Ye’s mother. “At first, we were worried that he was just making an excuse to play computer games. We talked about it, but then I realized he was really into programming.”

(Photo/Zhejiang News)

Soon afterwards, Ye Jianing became a consistent winner in many provincial and national programming competitions. He won first prize at the Informatics National League in his third year of middle school. Peking University was so impressed by his achievements that they made him the offer right after he got into high school. Ye did not get carried away by the early offer. He continued to work hard and ranked 14th in the 33rd National Informatics Olympiad in his second year of high school, obtaining a qualification that exempted him from taking national college entrance examination, while still being admitted to Peking University.

Ye's admission letter (Photo/Zhejiang News)

His mother attributes his outstanding academic performance to his conscientiousness and diligence. “Our family tradition is to take whatever we do seriously. Nowadays kids are all smart, so only seriousness can make one stand out,” said Yu.

The group photo posted by Ye during his recent trip to Japan (Photo/Zhejiang News)

Ye said his future is well planned. He looks forward to participating in more research that involves cutting-edge technologies and wants to make his own contribution to China’s development of computer science. His mother hopes he meets a girl and falls in love. “During his recent trip to an academic exchange in Japan, he posted a group photo with a lovely girl in it. His father and I were so excited!” said Yu.