Ohio Quadruplets Accepted To Yale And Harvard
Imagine applying to the Ivy league school of your dreams, and not only getting accepted to all of them, but having the remaining three-fourths of your quadruplets basking in that same joy. This was the reality for the Wade brothers of Lakota East High School in Ohio when they discovered, just before track practice on Thursday (Mar. 30), that they were all accepted to Yale and Harvard to join the prestigious Class of 2021. Both schools had single-digit acceptance rates with Yale accepting only 2,272 of the 32,000 students who applied (7.1 percent), while Harvard only accepted 2,056 of the 39,000 who applied this year (5.3 percent), the Washington Post reports.
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Each of the 18-year-old brothers, Nigel, Zach, Aaron and Nick, reflected on how they felt after receiving news of their acceptance.
“We’re still in shock, honestly. I don’t think it has sunk in yet.” – Aaron Wade
“I just felt blessed at that moment. It was an unreal feeling, I guess.” – Nigel Wade
“Honestly, to have one child from a family be accepted to a school like this is amazing. But for all four to be accepted – I just don’t, I don’t know how it happened.” – Zach Wade
Aaron continues to attest to their shock saying, “We didn’t go into this thinking, ‘Oh, we’re going to apply to all these schools and get into all of them,’” he continues, “…it was important that we each find a school where we think that we’ll thrive, and where we think that we’ll contribute.”
The four Ohio Wade brothers admitted to the entering class at both Harvard and Yale. https://t.co/cSRmSLNSXG
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) April 5, 2017
In addition to the two Ivy League schools that they applied to collectively, the Wade brothers also applied to other highly-competitive schools that best fit them, places they felt they could contribute to the most. Nick was accepted to Duke, Georgetown and Stanford. Aaron got into Stanford as well. Nigel locked in Johns Hopkins and Vanderbilt while Zach snagged Cornell. All the aforementioned schools, which were not the only schools to accept the young men, all have acceptance rates below 20 percent.
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While the boys share their plans to study international relations, economics, engineering, computer science, cognitive science and neuroscience, their father reflected on the moment he first started thinking about financially planning for their higher education endeavors.
“I remember they were doing an ultrasound and they said, ‘Mr. Wade, you better sit down.’ I said, ‘What’s going on?’ They said, ‘There’s not two. There’s four.’ It was really at that point in time that I tried to figure out how we’re going to pay for school,” Darrin Wade said.
At first, the Wade parents believed they were only having twins, but two weeks later discovered they were having quadruplets instead. Since that time, Wade and his wife have been saving money for their sons’ education. But, the father acknowledges that the money saved is not going to be a match for the quadruplets’ distinguished futures and the siblings aren’t foreign to the financial aspect of higher learning. Nick Wade attests that financial aid is going to “be a big player” in their decision of where they choose to go.
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No matter where the Wade brothers end up, we have a feeling that their futures will be bright.