Homeschooled Edmonton sisters who started university at 12, 14 graduate from U of T with master's degrees
The family believes Isabel — the middle of three daughters — is the youngest person in history to obtain a master's from the school.
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It wasn’t a conscious decision, but at some point during their post-secondary careers, Sophia and Isabel Jewell stopped advertising the fact that — more often than not — they were the youngest people in the room.
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“It was just something that kind of evolved over time,” Sophia Jewell said from her family’s home in Edmonton, where she and her sister started courses at the University of Alberta at age 14 and 12, respectively
“For us, it wasn’t a big deal,” she said of their relative youth. “But when we realized how much it affected how (others) viewed us, or affected how comfortable they were interacting with us, we just kind of naturally stopped sharing.”
This month, the sisters completed another milestone, graduating from the University of Toronto with master’s in Slavic languages and literature. Sophia was 20 when she completed her coursework this fall, while Isabel was 17. The family believes Isabel — the middle of three daughters — is the youngest person in history to obtain a master’s from the school.
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The children of lawyers who met at U of A law school, Sophia and Isabel were homeschooled by their mother Mena. Both sisters’ educations were largely self-directed, and both took early interest in languages, particularly ones with connections to their family background.
“I wanted to learn the languages of our ancestors,” Sophia said. “Our family just speaks English, but we have Polish, Ukrainian ancestry, and also Korean, Irish, and French.”
When Sophia started taking classes in the U of A’s modern languages and cultural studies program in fall 2016, it was the first time she’d set foot in a formal classroom. Isabel joined her the following January, when she was just 12.
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The sisters, who took an identical course load through undergraduate and master’s, ended up specializing in Slavic languages. Their program focused on both literature and current events. Isabel’s most recent paper dealt with the defence of Snake Island, while Sophia’s dealt with patriotism during the battle of Kyiv.
“Isabel often took a more direct approach studying current events, and, for example, the use of media,” Sophia said. “And I tended to do more towards the philosophy or theoretical aspects of it.”
Mena Jewell said she sometimes gets calls from parents who want to know “the formula” for her daughters’ academic success.
“That’s kind of erroneous,” she said. “They have to decide for themselves what they want. It’s not like ‘oh I have a formula for kids to go to university.’ Because that kind of defeats the entire purpose.”
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The family is Catholic, but faith wasn’t the primary reason for choosing to homeschool, Mena Jewell said.
“This sounds kind of cheesy, but it’s basically about them being the best person that they were meant to be — not my vision of what a person should be,” she said. “We never pushed them to university and said ‘this is what you should do.’ We didn’t even know they would go at all.”
She added that for what’s known as “traditional” homeschooling, parents have “100 per cent flexibility” in what they choose to teach. “You choose the outcomes yourself, and you measure it against your own outcomes … the level of freedom is kind of mind-boggling.”
For now, Sophia and Isabel are taking a year off and planning their next steps, be they academic or career.
“That’s something we’re definitely talking about together,” Sophia said. “Because, you know, going through everything at the same time, it’s kind of hard to imagine (a situation) where we would just take separate paths.”
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