‘I’m Super, Super Excited’: N.C. Teen Brittany Reaves Headed to Law School After Graduating College at Just 18 Years Old

Like most 18-year-olds around this time, Brittany Reaves is celebrating her graduation — but not from high school.

Reaves, 18, was among the more than 1,200 students who graduated from Fayetteville State University in North Carolina on Saturday, earning her bachelor’s degree in history, Spectrum News reported. So what’s next for the accomplished young scholar?

Brittany Reaves

Thanks to an early college credit program at her high school, Brittany Reaves is graduating college at just 18 years old. (WTVD / video screenshot)

“Now I get to go to law school, which is a career field that I’m interested in, what I want to do,” Reaves said.

Four years of hard work and an early college credit program at her high school, Cumberland International Early College High School, allowed the teen to earn 85 credits. Reaves completed the remainder of her credits in just a year after enrolling at Fayetteville State in 2018.

Now, she’s set to start law school this fall at North Carolina Central in Durham.

“Brittany has been a learner from day one,” her mother told Durham’s WTVD, calling her daughter “gifted.”

Reaves’ early academic success came as no surprise to her family, who said  Brittany started reading when she was just 3 and mastered Mandarin Chinese when she was in high school. She’s also musically inclined.

In an Instagram post, the aspiring lawyer celebrated her latest accomplishment and thanked Fayetteville State for providing her a great opportunity that has “changed my life completely.” 

“I was admitted into CIECHS for high school and earned 85 college credits,” she explained. “FSU then awarded me the Debt Free Scholarship for my last year of college. “Thanks to FSU staff and students, I’ll be graduating on Saturday with my Bachelors in History at the age of 18!!! I will then be attending NCCU Law this Fall. I am so excited to start this new journey with FSU forever in my heart 💙💙

At law school, Reaves said she hopes to study civil litigation, as it’s what interests her the most.

“Going into civil litigation right now just because it’s a field that deals with education and consumer protection,” she told WTVD. “Landlord-tenant-those types of cases deal with people and laws have a lot to do with people.”

“I’m like super, super excited,” Reaves added.

Watch more in the video below.

Still independent.

We hope this story was worth your time. For over 14 years, Atlanta Black Star has stayed Black-owned and independently run. We didn't get here by waiting on ad budgets that were never built to prioritize us. Our readers did that.

Corporate support for Black media has always been thin. Outlets like ours get roughly 1% of the $170 billion spent on U.S. advertising each year, and that margin is shrinking further as advertisers walk back the DEI-linked commitments they made in 2020. That's the backdrop. It's not why we're asking.

The wider picture isn't any steadier. Newspaper ad revenue has fallen more than 80% since 2005, and local newsrooms are closing at a rate of roughly two a week nationwide. When outlets go under, it's rarely the ones built to center a Black perspective from the ground up that get to stick around.

We know a request for support isn't why you came here. But without readers choosing to fund this work directly, the depth of reporting we can do at home and abroad shrinks along with everyone else's. If you're not in a position to give, that doesn't change how much we value you as a reader.

If you are able to, a recurring contribution does more for us than a single one-time gift, because it lets us plan the next investigation instead of just the next invoice. It takes about 30 seconds, no long form, no account. Thank you for continuing to support independent journalism and freedom of the press.

Back to top