Whiz kid Stephen Wirth gets accepted by Yale and Harvard

It's nice to be wanted.

Stephen Wirth, who graduated from Stillwater Christian School on June 3 with a 3.99 grade point average, got to bask in that warm glow this spring when he was accepted by a pair of Ivy League schools.

The hallowed halls of Yale and Harvard, the 17-year-old graduate said, had appealed to him for years.

Now he has chosen to accept the call from Yale University in New Haven, Conn.

"I felt a real draw to the Ivy League - the old school, the heritage, the prestige," he said.

He also got the green light from Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., Willamette University in Salem, Ore., and Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Mich. - all with long traditions of academic excellence.

He said he was put on a wait list by Amherst and Dartmouth but was denied by Princeton.

Wirth, a Florida native who came to Whitefish when his family moved from their home that was battered by Hurricane Andrew in 1992, said his sights were set on studying law.

"I hope to get into law school," said Wirth, the son of Jeff and Bridget Wirth. "Being a part of that is really a draw to me. They also have a very strong music school."

Clarinet and bass clarinet anchor him to the Stillwater school orchestra, tenor and alto saxophones to the jazz band and piano to just about anything else in music.

His interests and his native talent stand a good chance of carrying him through challenges at Yale, but the people will be the sparkle.

Last fall, he visited several campuses on the East Coast but found something special in Connecticut.

"I went to Yale, and it just blew me away," Wirth said. "It had all the old buildings … but the people were just incredible," including students and professors.

He admitted that waiting for the final word from Yale and Harvard was anything but easy. He was nervous to check his e-mail from Harvard and, under his mother's month-long urging to check on Yale, he finally caved in and checked online the day before his letter was due from Yale on April 1.

"I applied for early admission at Yale, but they said no, that they would consider me with all the other students," he said. "So I had to apply to all the other schools," in case Yale turned him down.

Then the good news came not only from Yale but from Harvard, too.

"I was pretty surprised to get in both of them."

Wirth thinks that he's heading for Yale well prepared.

He enrolled in the former Flathead Valley Christian School as a fourth-grader, then was educated at home for a year. When he headed back to the school, now named Stillwater Christian, he stayed with it from middle school through high school.

"When I came here as a sophomore," he said of the high school, "I was afraid I was not going to get the upper-level classes I needed to get into Harvard and Yale."

But he said he's been thrilled with the academics and has watched the music program blossom. He is a member of National Honor Society and is the student council president this year.

"I really did receive a fantastic education here. I really am indebted to the school and the teachers here," he said. "And this year, spiritually, I've grown a lot."

A big factor in that growth, he said, was the apologetics/economics course he took as the senior seminar, a combination of the theological and the practical.

"It teaches how to defend the faith and what faith is. That course is one of the strongest benefits here."

He figured he received as good -if not better - an education at Stillwater Christian as he could have had elsewhere.

"One of the things the teachers really strive for is to cultivate not only a spirit of excellence but (to go) deeper … into purpose and an understanding of why you are here," Wirth said.

Learning how to articulate his convictions, even if he does not persuade others who disagree, has been invaluable, he said.

"That's the strength of the Christian faith, to be a light," he said. "If you can live your life knowing that you have shown your faith, you have shown God's glory."

He plans to study languages and literature at Yale, and he will take his math medicine through a course in the history of math. He long has been interested in economics but approaches it from its human culture aspect.

Wirth expects to apply to Harvard and Yale law schools.

"I'll focus on constitutional law so I can be a light in the world, have an impact on the world," he said.

"One thing this school is good at," he said of Stillwater Christian, "is creating people who can go out and change the world."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com.