This time of the year is one of the most stressful for high school seniors waiting to hear back from colleges. Imagine being confident enough to apply to all of the Ivy League schools… and then finding out you’ve been admitted to all of them. It’s almost unheard of. But Kwasi Enin, a 17-year-old and first-generation American from Long Island, NY, can now add this to his list of achievements.
According to college counselors, “the feat is extremely rare—few students even apply to all eight, because each seeks different qualities in their freshman class. Almost none are invited to attend them all.”
Given that in recent years, the acceptance rates at top schools have fallen into the single-digit territory—on one end of the Ivy vine, Harvard admitted just 5.9% of applicants this year, and, on the other, Cornell admitted only 14%—getting into just a couple of the most elite schools in the nation would be a dream come true for most. Having all 8 Ivy acceptances in hand seems almost unattainable.
But Enin’s credentials speak for themselves. He ranks 11 out of a class of 647 at a large public school on the south shore of Long Island, putting him in the top 2% of his class. He’ll have taken 11 AP courses by the end of the school year, and, with an SAT score of 2,250 (out of a total 2,400), he’s in the 99th percentile for African American students. And those are just his academic achievements. Enin is also a musician who sings in the school’s a capella group and plays the viola. He volunteers at Stony Brook University Hospital’s radiology department and plans to study medicine.
On top of these impressive stats, Enin had a few factors working in his favor. Being a male applicant helps a bit. Girls are slightly over-represented in applicant pools. According to the U.S. Department of Education, females make up 57% of college students, and elite colleges are attempting to keep their male-female ratios as balanced as possible, which gives male applicants a slight edge. (Now, what’s that again about the war against boys...? Read Christina Hoff Sommers Q&A here.) And, as a first-generation American from Ghana, “he’s not a typical African American kid.” Well, that much is for sure.
The best part of the deal is not only that Enin can choose to attend any of Ivies, he also has the upper hand in negotiating a killer financial aid package. (Princeton is the front runner so far in generosity.) From all of us at AdmitSee, congratulations Kwasi!! Your hard work has most definitely paid off. Now get on AdmitSee.com and create a profile to share your college admissions story!
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