College jackpot: Long Island teen accepted by all 8 Ivy League schools
For high school seniors, this is the season when hope meets reality when it comes to college admission - except for a Long Island teenager who has won the equivalent of the academic jackpot.
Kwasi Enin, 17, of Shirley, N.Y., has been accepted by all eight Ivy League schools: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania. He now gets to choose among a cornucopia of educational riches.
“The yeses kept coming,” Enin, who wants to be a physician, told Newsday, the Long Island newspaper. He said he couldn’t believe it as the acceptances piled up.
Neither could Nancy Winkler, a guidance counselor at Enin’s school, William Floyd High School
“It’s a big deal when we have students apply to one or two Ivies,” Winkler told USA Today. “To get into one or two is huge. This is extraordinary.”
Even applying to all of the Ivy league schools is a rarity, but Enin said he decided to seek admission to all of them because each had different qualities. Each school has different admission criteria as each seeks the right mix for entering classes.
But Enin rang the admission bell at all of the schools, which accept from 5.9% to about 15% of applicants.
Enin, a first-generation American whose parents emigrated from Ghana, scored 2,250 out of 2,400 on the SAT, according to USA Today. That places him in the 99th percentile for all students taking the exam.
He has taken and scored strongly on many Advanced Placement exams. He is a shot putter on the field and plays the viola and sings.
While he is still weighing his options, Enin said his choice will depend in part on the amount of aid he is offered. But he noted that he liked Yale, in Connecticut, across Long Island Sound from his home.
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