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Dubai teen soon-to-be master in economics

Dubai - Shae spends his spare time working on university level Economics courses.

It was a summer course that made 15-year-old Dubai student Shae McKenna hooked on to economics. Shae, who has just completed Grade 9 has not yet started studying Economics as a subject at school, yet he has managed to complete three courses in understanding development in poor countries from one of the best universities in the world, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Shae spends his spare time working on university level Economics courses, which will enable him to get a master's degree by the time he turns 16. He recently went to the London School of Economics to do a bachelor's paper in introductory macro-economics.
At MIT, Shae is pursuing a Micro Master's degree which is essentially a Masters degree that has five different courses. Explaining on the courses he is doing online from MIT, Shae said: "All of them have to do with understanding development in poor countries, which is done through understanding micro economics and econometrics. I am learning to analyse data, deriving models on how these markets work and policies influence the developing nations."
Talking about how he was introduced to the subject, GEMS World Academy student Shae said: "I took up a summer school course last year which had professors teaching us about international relations, politics and element of economics.
Economics fascinated me and I inquired more about it. I have studied in different corners of the world, from New Zealand to India and now Middle East. The exposure got me interested in understanding how different countries work, with different infrastructures. I also understood inefficient systems, policies that are causing hardships to people like unemployment and inflation."
On completing the summer course Shae found out more about online Economics courses and started taking up courses online and completing them. Not only that, the teenager is also learning Latin, statistics and is also managing to balance between his school work and extracurricular activities.
Commending on Shae's achievement, Start Walker, CEO at GEMS World Academy, said: "We are proud of our student who is pursuing college level Economics courses from reputed institutes. We are now trying to find a pathway for him through our school that supports him and so that he can get early entry into top colleges such as Harvard, MIT, LSE. We are giving him leadership roles such as he is director of our entrepreneurship centre and is also helping us set it up."
saman@khaleejtimes.com