Albion student will graduate a year early and with college degree
Bradley Pierce started taking college classes in the 6th grade
Photos by Tom Rivers: Bradley Pierce will graduate from Albion High School on June 26, a year ahead of schedule. He will receive his degree from Genesee Community College on May 16.
ALBION – Bradley Pierce was in sixth grade when he took his first college class. He earned an A in computer information systems at Genesee Community College.
In the past five years, he has completed 63 college credits and will graduate from GCC on May 16. About six weeks later on June 26, he will graduate from Albion High School. The 16-year-old is headed to Rochester Institute of Technology to major in software engineering with a minor in AI.
Bradley is pulling off a rare feat of graduating a year early and having an associate’s degree before his high school commencement.
He has been precocious since a young age, even reading his father’s old college textbooks about computer science when Bradley was in elementary school.
During the Covid pandemic in 2020, schools turned to online learning due to the restrictions on having students in person at school. Bradley didn’t find the assignments challenging. He was bored and frustrated.
His parents, Kandace and Nick Pierce, shared their concerns with the Albion Middle School leadership. The principal suggested Bradley audit a college class.
The Pierce family talked to GCC, which was willing to try Bradley in the ACE program (Accelerated College Enrollment), which allows high school students to enroll in college-level courses and to earn college credits. GCC let Bradley try one course, not wanting to overwhelm him. Bradley had no problems, attaining a very high A in that first class, which was in the spring semester of sixth grade.
He took one or two GCC classes every semester after that, from seventh to 11th grade, with a couple classes also last summer. (Bradley was considered a junior to start this high school year.) All of the college classes have been online, except for five that were taught by Albion teachers in person at the high school, allowing Bradley and his classmates to earn dual credits.
“I preferred the online classes because they are more intense,” he said. “I can go at my own pace.”
Bradley Pierce has used an accelerated schedule to complete a course load through high school and also Genesee Community College. He will attend Rochester Institute of Technology to major software engineering.
Bradley is finishing up his last GCC class this semester in discrete math, which is about theories, proofs, logical math and their applications to computer programming.
He has managed his academic demands while also working three or four days a week at Save-A-Lot in Albion. He also had a job with the Village of Albion last year digitizing old public records. He is in the National Honor Society, Student Council and Yearbook Club at Albion.
“Bradley is a renaissance man,” said Tina Burgett, one of his teachers at Albion. “He is interested in many things and he is excellent at many things.”
Burgett first taught Bradley in fourth grade as his art teacher. She has also led his art classes in the middle and high schools.
She praised him for bringing a passion for learning in all of his subjects, including a pottery class were he made an exceptional bust.
“Art can be scary for someone who is focused on math and computers,” she said. “But he cares about the end product. I think he has an infectious excitement for the things he cares about. It’s been a blessing to be his teacher.”
Nick and Kandace Pierce knew their son Bradley was precocious when he was a little kid. He started cracking the Wi-Fi signal at age 8. He was reading college-level computer science textbooks in elementary school, and was writing his own computer programs. He also found security gaps in some on the popular online computer games, and he let operators know about those vulnerabilities, which he said were resolved.
Bradley made his own computer programming language, Scrybe. He created games on his graphing calculator in high school, including Tetris. He developed a Spanish conjugation program that is now available for other students.
Bradley’s father has a computer degree and is a self-described “electronics nerd.” He does electronics repair and works at Ace Hardware. Bradley’s mother is an intensive care nurse at United Memorial Medical Center in Batavia.
Bradley has a brother Jacob who is in fifth grade and also enjoys computer programming, and loves chess.
The Pierces are from Oklahoma City. Mr. and Mrs. Pierce were on a vacation to Niagara Falls when they fell in love with Western New York. They moved to WNY in 2016, impressed with the quality of schools, the relatively low-cost living and the many healthcare options.
“We liked the old Victorian homes,” Mr. Pierce said. “There are no tornadoes and we like the agricultural landscape.”
