Student’s Accomplishments Lead to Harvard

MaxPreps Student Section

What gets someone into an Ivy League school? Maybe being secretary of the Senior Student Government, having one of the top ten GPAs in a graduating class of over 1000, and if you are a part of a multitude of sports (like the handball and swimming teams) you can get in. This seems practically impossible, but it is not. This describes Alexandr Bukhta a 6'1 and 170 lb senior at Brooklyn Tech (Brooklyn, N.Y.) High School.

One might wonder how Alexandr handled all of these activities. Sports and Student Government are both huge commitments by themselves. Although it seems as if there is never enough free time for high school students these days, Alex manages it well, "It's very strenuous, but at the end of the day, I think what gets me through everything is my love for everything I do. Some say, ‘Oh, I need extra-curricula for college' or ‘I need credits to graduate'. Of course they wouldn't be able to handle the workload and the extra-curricula; they don't enjoy any of it."

While on the swim team, Alex went to the City Championships twice – losing to both rivals Stuyvesant and Fort Hamilton. Last season the Handball team made it to the semi-finals where they lost to Bronx Science 62-39. Even though they've never won a City Championship, Alex still says that playoffs are the best experiences, "The most exciting moments have to be playoffs. Every year, we play for months at a time at each sport to come down to a single meet or game. The pressure and the nervousness, that once prevailed is converted into motivation and energy that you can use. That wave of adrenaline is just overwhelming, when you and your entire team fight to become number one in the city. Even when we fell short, everyone's best came out and we all left with medals and new records."

Alex earned full scholarships to Harvard and Princeton. He will attend Harvard and study Biomedical Engineering. With Harvard's Division I status, Alex will probably not be able to be on the swimming team, and sadly they do not have a handball team – yet. He hopes to start a Handball Club and see where it can go from there. He will be taking a break from Student Government in college, which he finds the most stressful of his various activities, as those decisions, such as budgets, school trips and other policies, affect the entire school.

Although balancing the extra-curricula and demanding classes have been difficult, Alex is thankful for the time-management skills that Tech taught him. Instead of playing video games and sitting around like he once did, he was able to perfect his writing and sports skills. "It's all just a balancing game, learning where to take time from and where to add it to is key," he continues, "By learning to plan my time, I have had a lot of success in every endeavor I pursued."

He hopes to combine his math and science interests into future accomplishments in the Bio-Medical Engineering field; perhaps helping to create a medical device that could assist others, similar to insulin pumps or pacemakers. He may not accomplish this as fast as his 50-yard freestyle time in swimming, but he's ready to dive right in.