"He's all-Ivy-- accepted to all 8 Ivy League colleges" By: McKay Fugate

In the next month, Kwasi Enin must make a tough decision: Which of the eight Ivy League universities should he attend this fall? A first-generation American from Shirley, N.Y., the 17-year-old violist and aspiring physician applied to all eight, from Brown to Yale. The responses began rolling in over the past few months, and by late last week when he opened an e-mail from Harvard, he found he'd been accepted to every one. School district officials provided scanned copies of acceptance letters from all eight on Monday. Yale confirmed that it was holding a spot for Enin. For most of the eight schools, acceptance comes rarely, even among the USA's top students. At the top end, Cornell University admitted only 14% of applicants. Harvard accepted just 5.9%. But Enin has "a lot of things in his favor," says college admissions expert Katherine Cohen, CEO and founder of IvyWise, a New York-based consulting firm. For one thing, he's a young man. He ranks No. 11 in a class of 647 at William Floyd, a large public school on Long Island's south shore. That puts him in the top 2% of his class. His SAT score, at 2,250 out of 2,400 points, puts him in the 99th percentile for African-American students. He will also have taken 11 Advanced Placement courses by the time he graduates this spring. He's a musician who sings in the school's a capella group and volunteers at Stony Brook University Hospital's radiology department. Enin plans to study medicine, as did both of his parents. They emigrated to New York from Ghana in the 1980s and studied at public colleges nearby. Both are nurses. Being a first-generation American from Ghana also helps him stand out, Cohen says. "He's not a typical African-American kid." Once he decides, she says, he should write letters to the seven runners-up saying he's "honored to have been admitted." After all, he's got to keep his options open for graduate school.

Ok, I know that everyone is stressing about college right now, but this actually gave me some hope. This kid has a lot of things going for him in a college admissions counselor's eyes, but I know he also possesses a lot of qualities that Booker T. students have. From what I've read, he's driven, smart, well rounded, and loves the arts. Not saying that we will all be accepted into Ivy League schools, but at least we know we have a chance.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/03/31/ivy-league-admissions-college-university/7119531/