44 essays later, Fayetteville early college student has pick of top schools
High school senior Caden Ketchman has ideas on education reform, as he is working on completing his own education.
For example, he has written that an over-focus on STEM — Science, Technology, Engineering and Math — is taking up too much bandwidth in K12 education, to the sacrifice of liberal arts, even though Caden himself excels in STEM studies.
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He has shared his ideas on education reform on the podcast, “Disrupt Education.” He also runs public relations for #ICANHELP, a national nonprofit, which took him to an international event in Los Angeles earlier this year.
“The organization’s purpose is to highlight the way people are using digital platforms for good instead of bashing and negativity,” says Caden, who is student body president at Cumberland Polytechnic High School.
Meanwhile, there is the matter of applying to college. Turns out Caden is pretty darn good at it. He was accepted at nine schools — all of them highly competitive, several with acceptance rates in the single digits. They include: Columbia University in New York City; Fordham University in New York City; New York University; Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania; UNC-Chapel Hill; Vassar College in New York state; Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee; Wesleyan University in Connecticut; and Williams College in Massachusetts.
In the end, he came full circle, choosing Columbia, an Ivy League school near where his mother’s family lives and which he has had an interest in since a young age.
Columbia’s acceptance rate for graduating seniors is consistently one of the ten lowest in country. But as with all the schools Caden applied for — 14 in all, he had a plan.
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He says he started the application process in earnest last summer. He hunkered down from Dec. 22 to Jan. 6 and treated applying to college like a job. He estimates he wrote at least 44 essays.
But in the end, it was what he wrote on a set of lists, required by Columbia, that may have put him over the top at that school.
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“They’ll ask you like, ‘What’s a list of books you read outside of school,’” he says, adding they assign only a word limit. “They don’t tell you how to structure it, they don’t tell you anything.”
Caden said he tried to illustrate different facets of his personality by his choices and his genuinely diverse and niche interests, such as Hungarian studies.
A couple of weeks after being accepted, he received a personalized letter from an admissions officer: “They said their favorite part of my application was the lists.”
He started early
Caden is the son of Stacey and Christopher Ketchman, both trained psychologists. His younger sister is Lilliana, a dancer and actor with a sizeable Instagram following who has appeared along with their mother on the Lifetime reality show “Dance Moms.”
Stacey Ketchman said she is not surprised by Caden’s meticulous approach to applying for college.
“He did plan every day around working these essays and applications, getting to know every single school so that he was catering his application to that school,” she said. “He started as early as you possibly could.”
She said: “He listened to podcasts, he reads, he watched YouTube videos” — she paused for a chuckle — “he did everything that anybody could do to prepare himself. But that’s just his personality. He’s always been like that.”
Her son will be on the pre-med timeline at Columbia.
“I do remember him being 3 years old at dinner telling us he was either going to be a doctor, an astronaut or a space monkey,” she said with a big laugh. “So we’re like, ‘OK, we’re hoping for one of the first two.’”
She said the application process tested her son’s generally calm demeanor.
“He definitely overall takes it as it comes and doesn’t let it get to him,” she says. “Once in a while, you’ll just kind of get it in you, that ‘Oh-my-gosh this is overwhelming and impossible.’ But that feeling didn’t last very long.”
An old soul
Caden is taking a path to medicine that may seem less traditional but is in keeping with his view of the value of liberal arts. He plans to study philosophy as an undergraduate.
It is a field he has been interested in since he browsed the shelves at Barnes & Noble in Fayetteville and picked up a volume by Albert Camus, a French writer and philosopher.
His long-range plan has for years included becoming a neurologist — but in the last few weeks, and after visiting Columbia, he could see himself going into the legal side of medicine instead.
“I intend to use my philosophy degree to sort of work on the medical ethics side of things in terms of policy, which could kind of go either way, when it comes to law or medicine,” he said.
Caden is involved in several clubs at Cumberland Polytechnic, a Cumberland County Schools early college on the campus of Fayetteville Technical Community College. He says student government and the poetry club are his favorites.
He credits the school’s flexible class schedule with giving him time to explore independent study. He also praises two teachers with whom he bounces off ideas and considers friends, Casandra Anderson and Andrea Phillips.
Phillips, an English teacher, said Caden was curious, devoted to intellectual pursuits and liked to talk policy and philosophy. She said he seems like an “old soul.”
She first taught him as a sophomore during a year impacted by COVID-19.
“We were online,” she said. “He was one of the rare kids that was there every day with his camera on — and asking questions, not just of me but of his classmates. He is very good at asking classmates questions without sounding condescending.”
She added: “He’s very intense but also very likable. I think he’s funny.”
Chad Barbour, principal at Cumberland Polytechnic, said Caden is humble and hard-working. Caden takes responsibility for his education and took advanced math classes at Fayetteville State University that were not offered at FTCC, the principal said.
For two years, Caden has led study sessions for his fellow students on test-taking strategies for the ACT, a standardized admissions test, Barbour said.
“He just goes the extra mile and really gives a lot of himself,” he said.
Be yourself
As for Caden, when it comes to applying for schools, he offers the following advice: Be yourself. Don’t try to craft a perfect persona.
“All you can do is be as absolutely genuine as possible,” he said.
Myron B. Pitts can be reached at mpitts@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3559.
This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Fayetteville, NC high school student has pick of top colleges
