9 Outstanding Black Students Accepted to Multiple Ivy League Schools

Recent studies have shown that the achievement gap between young African-American students and their white counterparts is still a major issue in our community. Yet some kids are bridging the gap in spite of this inequity. Here are some young people who show us that with enough passion and support, anything is possible. Saheela Ibraheem Back in 2011, at the tender age of 15, Saheela Ibraheem was accepted to 13 colleges, six of them Ivy League. She decided to attend Harvard, becoming one of the youngest students to attend the university. When the New Jersey public school curriculum failed to challenge Ibraheem, she skipped two grades and enrolled in the Wardlaw-Hartridge School, a 420-student private school in Edison. She has credited her amazing educational journey with discovering and following her passion for science. She hopes to eventually study neuroscience. Now 18-years-old, Ibraheem is going into her senior year at Harvard. She speaks four languages - Arabic, Spanish, Latin, and English - and was named on “The World’s 50 Smartest Teenagers” list. Akintunde Ahmad Oakland, Calif., teen Akintunde Ahmad is proud to point out that he is a product of at an underfunded school system that has failed so many other young people. Despite only attending public schools in his hometown, Ahmad earned a 2100 out of 2400 SAT score and maintained a 5.0 GPA. The 17-year-old is also active in school sports and plays several musical instruments. In an interview with ABC News, Ahmed said that people often make assumptions about him based on his appearance, assuming that a young Black man with dreadlocks could not possible have the grades he has. This extraordinary young man has taken to keeping a copy of his class grades and SAT scores on his cellphone to prove the naysayers wrong. During a television appearance on Ellen last week, Ahmad announced that he will be attending Yale University in the fall. Kwasi Enin Kwasi Enin is a 17-year-old from Long Island , N. Y., who was recently accepted to not just one or two, but eight Ivy League universities. For this accomplishment, Enin earned a near-perfect score on the SAT, graduated in the top 2 percent of his class, and completed 11 Advanced Placement classes and to a number of extracurricular activities. In addition to the eight Ivy League schools, Enin was also accepted to Duke, Stony Brook, SUNY Geneseo and Binghamton universities. Enin said he had been leaning toward accepting Yale's offer, but was waiting to review the final financial aid offers from all the schools before making a final decision. However a visit to Yale's New Haven, Conn., campus sealed the deal for him. Avery Coffey Avery Coffey, a student at Benjamin Banneker Academy in Washington, D.C., recently received the news that he had been accepted to five Ivy League colleges. Benjamin Banneker Academy is known for its commitment to education, and consistently achieves a 100 percent graduation rate. However, Coffey is in a league of his own, having maintained a staggering 4.3 grade point average, in addition to playing baseball, basketball, tennis and soccer. The 17-year-old even built a robot at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory while completing an internship there. Coffey plans to major in finance, and hopes to one day be the chief financial officer of his own investment firm. Zach Wood Graduating senior Zach Wood was not only accepted at the college of his dreams, Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., but also to several prestigious summer programs at Ivy League universities. The senior at the prestigious private Bullis School in Potomac, Md., used to wake early on school days at his home in Washington, D.C.'s rough-and-tumble Ward 8, and travel two and a half hours by bus and train to get to classes. Wood's prospects for attending Yale's summer program was put in jeopardy when he did not receive funding for the tuition of more than $12,000. He started a crowd-funding campaign on fundme.com, but still fell short of the total amount. Luckily, art patron Peggy Cooper Cafriz, stepped in at the last minute. The co-founder of Duke Ellington School for the Arts offered the young man $6,000 toward the tuition. Patrick Peoples Patrick Peoples has the distinct honor of becoming the latest student to be accepted into multiple Ivy League schools. The 17-year-old has been granted admission to Princeton University, Yale University, Columbia University, Brown University, Dartmouth College, Cornell University and University of Pennsylvania. In addition to the Ivy League schools, Peoples was also accepted to Duke University, Davidson College, the University of Chicago and he was one of two New Hanover High School students to be offered the Morehead-Cain Scholarship to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Peoples, who currently attends the Lyceum Academy of New Hanover High School in Wilmington, N. C., has decided to attend Yale in the fall. He says he wants to create social change with a degree in public policy and economics. "I have a big passion for social justice," Peoples said. "So when I see things that can be fixed or when I see people that don't have the opportunity that I've had, it really makes me want to go up as far as I can and reach back and help people." Peoples is also editor-in-chief of his yearbook and heavily involved in Boy Scouts, student government and the Young Democrats. Triplets Malik, Ahmad and Khalil Jones The Jones triplets - Malik, Ahmad and Khalil - have received multiple offers from Ivy League schools and the brothers credit their sibling rivalry for outstanding achievements in sports and academics. “You can’t let the other people be better than you, because you don’t want to be the worst one,” Khalil said jokingly during an interview with NBC Washington. “So, it’s kind of like we’re always pushing each other.” Malik, Ahmad and Khalil have narrowed down their choices to Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania. The siblings will continue to stick together as they begin college in the fall. “The three of us together shine so much more brightly than the three of us separately,” Ahmad said to NBC Washington. The student-athlete brothers currently attend Georgetown Day School in Washington, D.C., and all three managed to earn a 3.7 GPA. But it wasn’t just their sibling rivalry that encouraged the brothers to excel. The biggest inspiration for the Jones triplets is their parents. They said that at an early age their parents taught them to value education and instilled them with a stellar work ethic.

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