Ghanaian American Kwasi Enin does the unprecedented.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: While it’s no secret that the Indian American community overall have a stellar reputation for getting into the nation’s best schools and for being leaders in every industry imaginable, and winning year after year the national spelling and geography bees, perhaps none can claim the remarkable feat accomplished by New York teenager Kwasi Enin: being accepted into all eight Ivy League universities.
Enin, 17, who is originally from Ghana, gained acceptance to eight of the most prestigious schools in the entire nation: Yale, Cornell, Princeton, Harvard, Brown, Dartmouth, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylvania. Princeton was the first to accept him, all the way back in December, and just last week, Harvard finally accepted him, too, setting a phenomenal benchmark for himself and other aspiring academics.
His resume is impeccable: an SAT score 2250 out of 2400 (which puts him in the 99th percentile), a ranking in the top 2% of his class at William Floyd High School, and A’s in 11 Advanced Placement (AP) classes. On top of that, he volunteers at the Stony Brook University Hospital – where his parents are nurses – plays the viola, sings a capella, and is also an accomplished shot putter.
Like his parents, Enin plans to be part of the medical field, but as a doctor. Enin’s stunning accomplishment – combined, the Ivy Leagues only accepted about 9% of their applicants for the class of 2018, with Cornell accepting the most at just 14% – is all the more noteworthy in light of recent statistics that portray African American youths as having severe educational handicaps across the nation.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation released a report yesterday, which showed that African American students in the US had an index rating of just 345 out of 1000, indicating a very low potential of financial success. That puts them in dead last, with the Asian, Caucasian, Latino, and Native American demographics all coming up ahead, in that order.
Enin’s parents emigrated from Ghana to the US in the 1980s. Speculation has arisen from all corners of the web that Enin’s acceptances to all eight Ivy League institutions may have been, at least in part, a result of affirmative action, with the colleges giving him a seat because of his exemplary performance as an African American youth in an effort to help boost their on-campus diversity (Ivy League schools have a reputation of being WASP strongholds).
But none of that should diminish the stunning accomplishment of this young man. Regardless of race and religion, getting into eight top-tier schools in the US is a tall order for anyone; that Enin’s eight acceptances were from the eight Ivy League schools makes it all the more incredible.
And where is Enin planning to go? As of now, he’s leaning toward Yale, although his mother wants him to keep his options open. At the very least, she told reporters, he should make sure he lets the other seven schools down gently – after all, he’ll have to go to medical school.
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com
1 Comment
“But none of that should diminish the stunning accomplishment of this young
man.”
What a stupid thing to say. OF COURSE it diminishes the accomplishment. Instead of getting the A that he honestly earned, and getting fair credit for it, the corporate-controlled government propaganda machine is trumpeting how he got an A+, but only because he was black. He has his role model of unearned self-entitlement, Barrack Obama to follow, maybe he’ll be President of the United States someday, but only because he’s black and not because he earned it. In fact, I think it’s safe to assume that most if not all of affluent, successful non-athlete blacks have only succeeded in life due to the special and preferential treatment they are given, due to their inferior nature, whatever it may be.