“The education I received at Forsyth Tech was definitely competitive with most four-year universities.”

Kyle Nichols
Four-Year Transfer

Kyle Nichols, a Davie County resident who was home schooled, has always known he wanted to be a surgeon. 

Soon after he started at public high school, his mother started looking for educational opportunities that would help him live up to his high potential. At Forsyth Tech, she learned from guidance counselor Sherraine McLean (now director of the Shugart Women’s Center) that North Carolina had recently passed a law permitting people under age 16 to be fulltime students at state colleges. So at age 14 Kyle enrolled, with the goal of eventually becoming a medical doctor.

Kyle is now well on his way to that goal, a student at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Even as a first year student he had the privilege of working in Dr. Anthony Atala’s laboratory, pursuing his interest in regenerative medicine. He is also the recipient of a National Institutes of Health research grant.

“The education I received at Forsyth Tech was definitely competitive with most four-year universities,” Kyle said. “I took chemistry up to organic chemistry and the quality was excellent. My instructors were very open to giving me chances to explore. I was a lab assistant while I was in school and I still use the procedures I learned at Forsyth Tech.” 

Kyle transferred to East Carolina University after receiving his associate’s degree. After getting his bachelor’s degree in chemistry, he took a year out of school that he says taught him about himself. That year, at age 18, he volunteered at a clinic in a remote part of Mexico, went on a family trip to England, volunteered in his mother’s fifth-grade classroom, and even taught some math classes and chemistry lab classes at Forsyth Tech. 

People often ask him if he didn’t miss out on all the social and personal development that typically occur in high school, and Kyle tells them Forsyth Tech provided him with all he needed. He was active in the Student Government Council and Alpha Mu Beta. When he needed somebody to talk things over with, there were plenty of supportive people around, including Sherraine McLean, the guidance counselor he’d met during the admission process.  

And being a high school age student on a college campus didn’t feel strange or uncomfortable.

“It’s such a diverse place,” he said. “There are a lot of unconventional students at Forsyth Tech. You can have a 16-year-old and a 60-year-old in the same class.

“At Forsyth Tech you can be different and not weird.”