Meet the First Member of BU’s Class of 2023
Carl Ekholm is a dual citizen, has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, and volunteers as a tutor
Meet Carl Ekholm, the first official member of the Boston University Class of 2023. The soon-to-be Terrier has traveled the world. In addition to living in Sweden for a time, he’s climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, where he raised money to help address the country’s water shortage. He is a dorm prefect at his boarding school outside of Hartford, Conn., and he volunteers with classmates at a soup kitchen and tutors seventh and eighth grade students in Hartford.
Learn more below about the first member of 2019’s entering freshman class.
Citizenship: United States and Sweden (Ekholm was born in Greenwich, Conn., but his parents are both Swedish).
Hometown: Stockholm, Sweden. Even though he lived there only six years, from age 9 to 15, Ekholm still considers it home. His family now resides in Beaver Creek, Colo.
High school: He’s a senior at Westminster School, a private coeducational college-preparatory boarding and day school for grade 9 to 12 students in Simsbury, Conn. Ekholm says he chose to go to an American boarding school because of his older sister’s positive experience at Choate Rosemary Hall, in nearby Wallingford, Conn.
Favorite extracurricular: Tennis. He has played the sport since he was six years old and is now captain of the Westminster boys’ varsity team. He says he plans to try out for BU’s club tennis team.
Why BU? Ekholm says he knew he wanted to attend a city school, so he began looking at universities in major US cities. “When I visited BU, I kind of felt drawn to it, just this feeling that this was the place for me,” he says. Another selling point for Boston: “I went to Fenway and watched a Red Sox–Yankees game on my tour day, and that’s when I kind of fell in love with the city.” He applied for early decision and was the first to say yes to BU.
Where he was when he got his acceptance: At home in Colorado. He’d been told that the decision would be posted on BU’s online application portal by January 15. He started checking on January 12, and got the good news two days later. “I didn’t go out skiing that day just to be able to check,” he says.
His reaction when he got the news: “Just…ecstatic.” Ekholm was alone when he found out, but he called his family and friends right away. They shared his excitement and were “as relieved as I was for the college process to be over,” he says.
What he’s planning to study: His plan is to major in finance at the Questrom School of Business.
What he’s most looking forward to doing at BU: “Meeting new people from all around the world—and obviously, getting to watch all the hockey games.”
What he’s most excited about doing in Boston: Watching live sports, especially the Celtics.
How he’ll spend his last summer before college: Ekholm says he hopes to work as a counselor at a tennis camp in Connecticut or get a job in retail. Plus, he says, he’ll “try to spend some time in Boston in order to learn the subway system.”
Madeleine O’Keefe (College of Arts & Sciences’18, College of Communication’19) can be reached at mokeefe@bu.edu; follow her on Twitter @OKeefeMadeleine.
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