12-year-old American prodigy Tanishq Abraham aims to become doctor by 18

A 12-year-old child prodigy from Sacramento, California, is all geared up to begin his university life from fall this year to study medicine. Tanishq Abraham has been accepted to two University of California campuses and intends to study biomedical engineering and become a doctor and a medical researcher by the time he turns 18. His ambition does not end there. He hopes to become the US president one day.

Abraham, who already graduated with three community college degrees in May 2015, has now been accepted to UC Davis and received a regents scholarship to US Santa Cruz. However, he is yet to decide on which university he plans to join, according to the local broadcaster CBS13.

"I think I'll be 18 when I get my MD," he told the television channel.

The Indian-American was only seven years old when he joined the community college. Since then, he has received an associate's degrees from American River College in three streams — general science, math and physical science, and foreign language studies.

Because of his age, his college professors had initially expressed their reservations to admit him in their class. They later agreed to let him attend on the condition that his mother — a veterinarian doctor — too should take classes with him.

"There were time when I had to explain general relativity and special relativity to my mom," Abraham said.

Although some of his fellow students at college "were intimidated" by him, he said a lot of others "were really happy" to be studying along with a child.

Abraham clears the stigma around geniuses often seen as different. "When you think of a genius, you think of a mad scientist kind of thing," he said. Though he says he loves to learn as it is fun, he also quite enjoys playing video games just like any other ordinary child. He also plays the piano and is part of a local choir group.

Born in California in June 2003, his parents — a software engineer and a veterinarian doctor — migrated to US from the southern Indian state of Kerala. Even as a toddler Abraham showed an enormous interest in reading books and his parents noticed how he would recall everything that he heard and read at the age of two, including how to tell the time on the clock.

At age seven, he convinced his parents to let him enrol in American River college, from where he passed out with an 'A' grade in Geology and Astronomy. Besides, he has also taken math courses from Stanford University and finished it in a span of six months, when he was just five.

He joined Mensa, the international high IQ society, when he was only four years old.

"We tested him and discovered that he was pretty smart. We were surprised when we started giving him advanced stuff and he was picking it up really fast," his father Bijou Abraham told NBC News.