The Wade brothers — Nigel, Zachary, Nick, and Aaron — captured the hearts of the country back in 2017 when the now-23-year-old quadruplets made headlines when they were all accepted into 59 top universities, including Ivy League schools such as Harvard, Stanford and Vanderbilt.
They chose Yale, largely because of the school’s generous financial aid package offered to them. Now, five years later, the brothers have graduated the Ivy league school and begun their own professional journeys.
“For me, I majored in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology,” said Nigel Wade who resides in New Haven, Connecticut working as a researcher of Parkinson’s disease at Yale. He plans to continue his education by attending medical school.
“I majored in chemical engineering and economics,” said Zachary Wade, who now works as an investment banker for Goldman Sachs in San Francisco, California.
“Currently, I’m an investment analyst at the Mellon Foundation,” said Nick Wade who graduated with a degree in political science and is currently living in Brooklyn, New York.
“My job title is creative technologist,” said Aaron Wade who graduated with degrees in computer science and psychology and now works for Google in New York City.
The “Quad Squad” as they were dubbed at school were born four minutes apart and grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio to a mother, Kim Wade, who worked as a school principal and father, Darren Wade, who was a software engineer.
“Our parents were somewhat strict, our mother was a principal, our father was a software engineer with very high expectations,” Nigel said.
The brothers say, education and discipline were paramount, and it spilled into everyday occurrences, including going to the grocery store. “We would always walk in birth order, and whenever our parents stopped, there were tiles on the grocery store floor right, they’d make us each stand in a tile and not move, and if we moved, they’d flick us on our ears,” Aaron recalled.
“Summers were spent doing math packets, afternoons were spent at football or at track,” Nigel said of their adolescent years in school.
Unlike high school, where the brothers spent a lot of time together, at Yale they embarked on their own paths.
“We all played football, we all ran track, we were all in the same kind of honors classes so a lot of our friends, a lot of our interests and things we did outside of school were the same, not only because that was the only option but it was very convenient, but once we got to school, we had the ability to branch out in ways that weren’t previously available to us,” explained Nick.
The Ivy League school gave Nick opportunities to travel the world as he pursued his political science degree. “Going to Yale allowed me to travel to Palestine, Morocco, Jordan, a lot of different places so I could study these things, and that’s not an opportunity I would have had otherwise,” he said.
Meanwhile, his brothers who pursued STEM degrees spent sleepless nights studying in the library as Nigel revealed. “Surprise, surprise, Yale’s hard. A lot of my nights, they were stuck in the library, grinding, looking at physics, going into a lab, I’m going into the hospital, doing mentoring so to be honest, a lot of Yale was quite busy for me,” he said.
The “Quad Squad” admitted they rarely saw each other around campus and often remained in their own spaces as they worked towards their degrees. The brothers say amid the public accolades they received for attending the prestigious Ivy League school, they also felt added pressure to succeed.
“When we came into Yale, there were high expectations for us, from the community, there are going to be expectations from the people around you, and it’s very easy to fall into the trap that you’re not enough and feel like you’re an imposter and I want to say that, you do not need to be perfect in order to contribute something,” explained Nigel.
Now with Yale University degrees under their belts, the Wade brothers hope to continue leaving their marks now in their respective careers which are just beginning in the worlds of tech and arts and humanities.
Although they are no longer in school together and now live miles apart from each other, the brotherly bond they have shared since they were in the womb is hard to ignore once they are together.
“I just want to note, three of us are STEM, and one of us had a lot freer time in school and we just want to point that out,” Zack said jokingly toward his brother Nick and political science degree. “If you have a problem, you can just say my name,” Nick replied.
“We’re always there for each other, but it’s not like we have to be right next to each other or call each other every single day,” Zack further explained.
The Wade brothers say they understand the impact their story has made on communities across the country, especially within the Black community. They say they hope their story can help inspire others to work hard and succeed and they stressed the importance of having a strong support group to help achieve your goals.
“Community is one of the highest forms of currency, in the sense that you can know everything and have all the credentials on paper, but if you don’t know the right people to get your foot in the door it’s all kind of moot,” Aaron said, to the approval of his brothers.
None of the “Quad Squad” has any major regrets or marriage in the immediate future.
