New Yorker Kwasi Enin is accepted to all eight Ivy League colleges

GETTING into an Ivy League college is supposed to be excruciatingly hard, highly competitive and almost impossible. So how did this teenager get into all eight of them?

YOU might call him the ultimate high achiever - a US teenager who has achieved a seemingly impossible feat.

Seventeen-year old New Yorker, Kwasi Enin, has been accepted to all eight Ivy League colleges, the top echelon of higher education institutions in the US.

The Ivy League consists of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Dartmouth, Brown, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania.

If you’re trying to grasp the significance of the accomplishment, know this — collectively, the Ivies only accept less than 9 per cent of students that apply every year. And only the best students in the country even bother applying.

Applying for college in the US is an epically difficult process, nothing like the comparative cakewalk Australian students go through. Sure, Australians have to work hard all year, culminating in a set of gruelling exams which send many into a panic spiral.

But American teenagers have to do all that and more to get into university. Because of the highly competitive nature of college admissions, especially among the more prestigious institutions, universities expect applicants’ resumes to boast much more than just good test scores.

Harvard University only accepts 5.9 per cent of its applicants.

Students need a raft of diverse extra-curricular activities including sport, volunteer work, clubs and music. The more well-rounded you can show yourself to be, the more impressive your application.

On top of that, colleges want glowing letters of recommendation from teachers or community leaders. There’s also the dreaded portion of many applications — the personal essay which has to be, all at once, sincere, creative and inspiring.

Add to all of that a great SAT (national standardised exam) score, and some colleges also want you to front up for in-person interviews.

At this rate, it’s probably easier to get a job at Google.

Which is why Mr Enin’s achievement is so remarkable. All eight Ivies are thought to value different characteristics from their prospective students.

Dartmouth College’s picturesque campus.

The guidance counsellor at Mr Enin’s William Floyd High School in Long Island, New York, Nancy Winkler, told USA Today that in her 29 years in the profession, she has never seen anything like this.

She said it was rare enough for students to even apply to more than one or two of the Ivies.

So how did Mr Enin knock the socks off all these schools?

He’s academically ranked 11th in a class of 647 seniors at his school, achieved an SAT score of 2250 out of a possible of 2400, taken 11 advanced placement courses, he plays the viola and sings in an a capella group and volunteers in the radiology department at Stony Brook University.

Harvard often tops the world’s best universities list.

College consultant Katherine Cohen told USA Today Mr Ennis also has the advantage of being male (colleges are female-skewed) with migrant parents from Ghana.

He told the New York Daily News: “By applying to all eight, I figured it would better the chances of getting into one.”

On top of all the Ivies, Mr Ennis has also been accepted at three State University of New York campuses and Duke University, which, apart from being embroiled in false rape accusations against its lacrosse team a few years ago, has a great reputation.

Mr Enin has aspirations to be a neurosurgeon or cardiologist (his parents are both nurses) and is now in a prime position to realise that goal.

Because of his desirability to all eight colleges, he should be able to negotiate for a plum financial aid or scholarship package with the school he ultimately attends. The schools will be fighting each other to claim him.

Let the wooing begin.