"Eighteen is an age limit for the state and so I haven't gone to clubs and things [while] people I know have been going for a while," he says. "I'll probably go once I'm old enough."

And then there is the 'bully' in his entryway.

"The guy next door, I hardly even know the guy, and he always makes fun of my age," Brauwerman says. "Ask him why because I sure don't know."

Brauwerman says he rejected the option of cross-registering with a Florida state university during his senior year in high school, preferring to study away from home.

"I wanted to start off as a freshman and make sure to stay the entire term," Brauwerman says. "If I went to the state school, my parents would want their boy back home, and I didn't want them to back out."

His parents, Suzan C. and Jeffrey N. Brauwerman, say they support their son's final decision.

"We're very excited. We feel not only is it a major accomplishment that our son got into Harvard, but it's a major accomplishment that he got in a year early," Jeffrey Brauwerman says.

His mother says she has no doubt about Brauwerman's ability to interact socially with classmates who were older.

"He's a very mature and focused young man," she says. "Age is not necessarily a criterion for maturity, and Michael's always been able to fit in."

'Doogie Syndrome'

Edward J. Ha '97 adds some perspective to these young students' experiences, because he will complete his Harvard degree this year at the age of 20.

Ha says that entering Harvard at age 16 "hasn't made all that much of a difference."

"I have no regrets," he says. "I thought that if I had stayed along with my own age groups that I would have been bored."

Ha says graduating before his 21st birthday presents an amusing paradox.

"It's a little strange that I've finished my entire college career without being old enough to drink," he says.