Bardin-Siekawitch receives full college scholarship through national program

Every year on Dec. 1, the internet is flooded with variations on the same video - a high school senior sits at their laptop surrounded by a crowd of onlookers who are anxious to discover whether the student has received a full ride to an elite college through the Questbridge program. The student opens their status letter and the crowd goes wild. The student is smothered in hugs. Tears are shed.

When Wrangell High School's Nikolai Bardin-Siekawitch received his Questbridge email, his response was "subdued" by comparison, he said. The letter arrived in his inbox during second period, but he waited to open it at home, despite the curiosity of his teachers and peers. "I wanted to open it with my family first," he said.

After learning that he had received a full scholarship to Boston University valued at $331,000, the first person he told was his mother.

Questbridge is a national college match program that places high-achieving, low-income students in elite colleges and universities throughout the U.S. The California-based nonprofit selected 5,613 finalists out of 17,900 applicants in 2022. Only 1,755 of those students - or 10% of the total applicant pool - matched with a college like Bardin-Siekawitch did. His scholarship will cover tuition, food, housing and travel expenses for four years.

"I nominated him in spring for the college match program," said language arts teacher Lisa Brooks, who has taught Bardin-Siekawitch since his sophomore year. He started working on the labor-intensive Questbridge application around six months ago and she is "proud of him because he stuck with it. He completed everything that they asked of him and he was really thorough."

Applying to college through Questbridge makes the already grueling application timeline even shorter. He had to do in-depth research on his college options, write and rewrite his personal statement essay, prepare for interviews, attend question and answer sessions and answer multiple supplemental essay questions for each of the nine schools he applied to.

His personal statement took "two days of constant writing," he recalled, but the supplemental essays were the worst. "There were three days out of one week that I literally just didn't go to school. I was just writing essays all day."

Brooks nominated him because she felt his capacities for hard work and self-motivation would make him a good fit for the Questbridge program. "From the beginning, I didn't have to ask him what he wanted to do," she recalled. "He told me what he wanted to do."

Bardin-Siekawitch plans to study mechanical engineering with a focus in aerospace. He learned about microgrids and energy technology through the Upward Bound program and designed an app concept called WattsApp that could help communities save energy by turning off unwanted devices automatically.

He also hopes to continue pursuing his other interests, like swimming, while he works toward his degree. "Free time is something I'm going to strive for but probably not receive," he laughed.

Boston University's undergraduate enrollment was around 17,500 last year, which is more than eight times the population of Wrangell. Living in such a large metropolitan area sounds "pretty daunting," he said, but he looks forward to making connections with fellow students that will be invaluable in his future career.

In the coming years, Bardin-Siekawitch plans to use what he's learned to help his friends and eventually, his little brother, through the formidable application process. "Now, I have advice to give to my friends who are planning to hopefully go through Questbridge as well," he said. "Now that I've had success with it, they've been inspired."