As the May 1 deadline for making a final choice approached, high school seniors all across the country were on the clock, having to finalize their final decisions concerning where they will find themselves in the fall. While many students had difficulty deciding among the schools that had accepted them, VHS senior Nik Bostrom may had one of the hardest decisions of them all.  As had been publicized in a lot of local media, Nik had been accepted at every one of the seven Ivy League schools he applied to, an accomplishment that no student in Verona history has ever achieved before.

The final verdict: Harvard.

Nik is as well-rounded a student as you would expect of someone getting into as many prestigious schools as he did. Throughout his four years of high school, he participated and thrived in the school marching and concert band, ran track, was a member of many different clubs, and on top of all of those extracurricular activities, he was able to keep up with and excel in the many different challenging classes over the years, ending up with a 4.44 GPA and incredible scores on both his SAT and SAT II subject tests, as well as scoring 5’s (the highest grade possible) on many of the multiple Advance Placement exams he took.

“I really didn’t anticipate getting in. I didn’t expect this to happen. It doesn’t seem real; it’s a dream,” Nik says when asked how he feels about his huge accomplishment. Of the eight Ivy League schools, the only one he did not get into was Dartmouth, simply because he chose not to apply because it didn’t seem to be the right fit for him.

In addition to the seven Ivy League schools, he also got into nine other prestigious universities and colleges across the nation. The complete list of all of his acceptances is: Brown, Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, Cornell, Georgia Tech, Harvard, NYU, Northeastern. Northwestern, Princeton, Rutgers, Stevens, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, UVA, and Yale.

Since word of his accomplishment has come out, Nik has been experiencing a bit of his own fame. In the mall one day, strangers recognized and congratulated him. “It was really weird since I wasn’t looking for the attention and I didn’t know those people, but I felt proud of myself.”

The weeks leading up to his final choice, which came down to Yale and Harvard, was stressful for Nik.  But it’s the kind of decision a lot of us would like to have the opportunity to make.