The Wades — Aaron, Zachary, Nigel and Nick —are drawing national media attention for their extraordinary feat. They were profiled in the Washington Post and spent most of Wednesday afternoon being followed by a national TV network news crew during their classes.
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The proud sons of Kim Wade – principal of Lakota Plains Junior School – and Darrin Wade, the four have excelled in the classroom and athletics.
“I have had the honor of knowing these boys since they were young because of knowing their mom and dad,” said Lakota East High School Principal Suzanna Davis. “I have watched these boys grow up into young men … and as students they epitomize what we would want from high school students.”
“They are the epitome of academic focus but well-rounded in every way we would want a child to be well-rounded, but each one of them is so very distinct from one another. Their individual personalities are what truly set them apart as high school students and as great young men,” said Davis.
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The four are uniformly good natured, so much so that their version of an argument is to disagree over which sibling is the smartest.
“Aaron is brilliant,” insists Nick.
“No, no,” protests Aaron. “You’re the guy (Nick) who got a state department scholarship to study Arabic.”
What they do all agree on is crediting their parents and Lakota teachers for helping to earn such an exciting opportunity.
“We’re grateful to our parents and the Lakota school district because it’s really something we couldn’t have done on our own without all the support we have had through our lives. It has been awesome,” said Nick, who along with Nigel and Zachary are leaning toward attending Yale.
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Aaron, however, currently has Stanford University as his leading choice.
“It’s really our parents our friends and our community who have come together and taught us how to be disciplined. We feel like getting into these schools show who the people around us are,” said Nigel.
Zachary nodded in agreement and added, “There has never been a time in our life whenever we said something (career goals) they said ‘oh that’s a big goal.’”
“They said ‘I know you guys can do it. You guys are hard workers and the sky’s the limit,’” said Zachary. “We were never told that we couldn’t get somewhere.”
Nigel said while they were all surprised by college acceptances, another bonus has been “we’ve all kind of grew closer to each other.”
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