| Atul Vyas scored in the top 1 percent on his medical school entry exams, but he was having trouble answering one question on applications to Harvard and Duke: Describe a hardship you've overcome.
"He said, I've not had any. I've had a blessed life,'" his father, Vijay, said Sunday.
Vyas never finished the application, never came closer to his goal of working in biomechanics.
He had a lifelong gift for academics. He skipped sixth-grade, scored the highest SAT score in his high school's history, and studied math, physics and premed at Claremont McKenna College.
"He never had to study," Vijay Vyas said. "When he was in 10th grade, I figured out he was smarter than me."
Vyas was sitting in the front car of the Metrolink train Friday, on his way to visit his parents in Simi Valley, his father said.
Atul's elder brother, who lives in London, was flying into Los Angeles on Sunday afternoon. His parents did not tell him why they were summoning him, only that there was a family emergency.
"He has no idea," Vijay Vyas said. "I said, I don't want to discuss it, just show up.'"
On Sunday, shocked friends and relatives came to the Vyas family home on a quiet cul-de-sac in Simi Valley to mourn his loss.
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