Former Citrus College student heading to MIT
Joaquin Perkins — who started taking courses at Citrus College while he was in middle school — will soon attend one of the most prestigious universities in the world.
After graduating from Whittier High School this upcoming June, the 18-year-old will head off to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to study mathematics.
For years, Joaquin has balanced high school and college courses, in addition to multiple extracurricular activities, such as chess, mock trial and tennis.
Joaquin began taking college courses when he was 13 years old, his father Kele Perkins said. At the end of seventh grade, he and his family looked at different options for summer activities and decided to take an introductory statistics course at Citrus College in 2017.
"He did well and wanted to pursue his math interest even further," Mr. Perkins said.
A few months later, Joaquin enrolled in an introductory philosophy/logic course at Citrus College before moving on to Calculus 2 with Citrus College mathematics instructor Jesus Gutierrez. In all, Joaquin took two courses with Mr. Gutierrez and a total of seven at Citrus College over a four-year span.
Mr. Gutierrez praised Joaquin for asking advanced questions that revealed his deep understanding of the subject.
"He worked independently on more advanced topics and would check in with me when making connections to the material we were learning," Mr. Gutierrez said. "Joaquin was respectful in all interactions and a pleasure to work with."
Soon after the course, Mr. Gutierrez wrote a letter of recommendation in support of Joaquin taking Calculus 3 at Rio Hondo College in fall 2018, the same semester he started ninth grade.
After starting at Whittier High School, Joaquin took advantage of an arrangement between the school and Whittier College that allowed students who had gone beyond the level of AP Calculus to take one math course per term at that college.
From his sophomore to senior year, Joaquin took several Whittier College courses, including Advanced/Non-Euclidean Geometry, Point Set Topology, GRE Math and Number Theory.
"I am completely impressed with Joaquin's trajectory of success and his impressive work in math," Mr. Gutierrez said. "I feel privileged to have had multiple opportunities to work with him." In December 2021, Joaquin learned he was accepted to MIT. He is Mr. Gutierrez's first student to be accepted to the historic institution.
"Being allowed to test into calculus classes at such a young age through a merit-based process was the primary reason that I was later able to proceed to upper-level classes by the end of my high school career," Joaquin said. "This essentially made Citrus the catalyst that spring-boarded me academically past what would've been a standard progression."
This article originally appeared in the May 2022 edition of the Citrus View.