I wonder if he self-taught English too.
But in order to preserve “diversity” the school that admits him will also have to admit an illiterate talentless idiot...any rap artist should suffice.
Sorry, it is beyond me. What did it say?
>> a 2250 on his SAT, had taken 11 AP courses, and was in the top 2% of his graduating class, but ...
No “but”, the academic record is the reason.
I read this in the local newspaper. Any high school kid that uses solace in an essay has it. His parents are from Ghana and they remind him every day that he’s lucky to be in the U.S.A.
I used to be on a committee that chose students to admit to our graduate program. We were always on the lookout for minority applicants with good scores, because we knew we’d get in trouble if we didn’t admit a certain number of minorities, and we really didn’t want to admit people who were way below average.
He has two things going for him. Good SAT scores, and his name, Kwasi.
That isn’t actually a high enough SAT score to guarantee a white male admission to an Ivy league school, but put it together with the race card, and he’s a shoe-in.
The boy is undoubtedly smart and and a hard worker. He is certainly far more musically talented than I am and it’s good that music has such a positive influence on his life and his intellectual development.
It is still a very pedestrian essay, earnest, self-serving with a veneer of humility, and not terribly original. It’s like the application essays my daughter wrote and like the essays most students write.
I don’t want to denigrate this young man in any way - I wish him success. But there is no way on earth that essay or his achievements would have won him admission into every Ivy League University if he had been white. (Unless he was a football player too.) And that is no criticism of Kwasi Enin, but of the universities.
The kid is sharp, but the real reason he got in everyone (in comparison to many a sharp white kid), is he is black.
I went to MIT and used my mother’s maiden name as my last name, which is not overtly Jewish as my surname (in face it’s Arabic, although she is Jewish).
My essay was about “growing up in the occupied territories,” which was true. Mind you, I was in Gush Katiff, and I didn’t lie, but I sure led them on.
Didn’t mention my military service, the fact I was married, or that I went to a Yeshiva.
And, yes, I had a 1550 SAT (back when it went to 1600) and a 4.0.
It’s all a game.
If Kwasi Enin’s name was Casey Enthoven and his ancestors hailed from Amsterdam, would he still have been accepted by all of those schools?
Essays count Big Time. I review candidates for my alma mater, and almost every kid has great grades/SAT scores. The essay is highly subjective and can tell reviewers something more about the person than their grades. My daughter got into an Ivy League college by writing a killer essay and by choosing an initial major that not as mainstream as most.
It’s an OK essay, but I don’t see it as Ivy League material. “While onstage as Jule in Guys and Dolls during my favorite musical” is terrible writing, repetitive and doesn’t make sense. There are others but that really jumped out at me. Don’t teachers review these anymore?
Some of the responses here are crazy. This kid got great SAT scores, took the right classes and has the academic profile of someone who makes it into an Ivy League school. He also happens to be black. Posters should be saving the comments about “he got in because of his skin color” for someone who deserves that type of comment. This kid does not deserve to be categorized as a diversity admission. Did his race play a part in his admission? Probably. But his record alone is the type of record of someone who gets into an Ivy League school irrespective of race.
I was also confused because he appears to be writing about how the course "Music in Our Lives", which he almost didn't take, sparked him to take a musical journey that enriched his life. A nice little story. However at the end, he talks about his wise decision to NOT take the "Music in Our Lives" course.
If I could go back 30 years, I'd have changed my name to something like Hzdak Zhou.
That said, I do wish the kid well. Sounds like he's going to make something of himself.
I’ll decompose the essay and then comment on the acceptances:
The essay is attractive in part because it is not perfect. It’s reasoning is jumbled in places and the flow is jumpy. It’s a bit of a puzzle to unravel. The essay talks of life as a journey and, yet, it itself is a journey. You don’t know where you’re going as you start reading it, and you have to get to the end to find out.
As to the acceptances, yes, everything lines up, academic potential, giftedness, inquisitiveness, and diversity. With regard to achievement, I can see indications of it (AP courses and involvement in school plays). So, I think that is there as well.
“I also now take music in my life.” Which means what????
Examples of arrogance and conceit:
“While onstage as Big Jule in Guys and Dolls during my favorite musical [poor grammar] , I helped create a wonderful atmosphere in the school auditorium by singing and dancing.”
To have enjoyed participating in the performance is one thing, or to have found it an enriching experience for hisself would be one thing, but to narcissiticly imply he knows how anyone in the audience felt, about his performance itself, is just arrogant nonsense.
As I become lost in these conversations , I create blissful memories in which I am truly part of my communit’s culture and eventually it’s history.
NO ONE, I repeat NO ONE knows they ever “create blissful memories” for anyone but themself, and becoming part of history is NOT known or knowable to participants at the time - even if one makes believe THEY are “making history”.
I won’t go one; that is so much intellectual flatulence in the essay.
This music nerd punched all the right intellectual buttons in the academic industrial establishment. He was in his way “preaching to the choir” like an old time evangelist and they all said Amen and Halleluja.
I would be interesting to compare this to his essay that he wrote for his SAT exam...you know, the one you have to do where you CANNOT receive any “help”.
What?
Every college orchestra is running short on Viola players.