There is a difference between a bilingual kid who grew up in a Russian speaking home and a kid motivated to speak Russian because it was the language of his great-grandparents.
Like any heritage language. Since we don’t know the facts, I’m not ready to conclude “the accomplishments are not so unusual either”. There are millions of people in the US who can barely crank out a sentence in their “heritage language” (put me in that category. Parents never spoke it, I was never motivated to study it) and they are more typical than the reverse.
Absolutely agree, we do not know the facts. I kind of inferred that from the quote included from the original statement. I may very well be wrong. My kids’ mother tongue is not English (as we are immigrants), and we taught them how to read in our native alphabet before they started kindergarten. They were practically native speakers. Kudos to the OP if this is not the case as Russian is a very difficult language
Russian Scholar Laureate has nothing to do with Russian descent and is given to students in Russian classes (my school nominates for the award and I took courses in Russian so I’m familiar with it)
All I am saying is that it is easier to do well if you are from a Russian household. This may very well be moot and not apply to the OP.
For instance, the National Spanish Examination has a separate category for people that speak Spanish, French, Italian or Romanian at home as these languages have similar origins.
My kids chose to study a third language in school (Spanish) which has nothing in common with their mother tongue.
It sounds from the OP’s comment above that he started Russian in middle school and it was his teacher who sparked his interest in the language. I doubt he’s a heritage speaker but we don’t know for sure, of course.
It is hard to gauge from Naviance/SCOIR unless you dig deeper. For example, did most admits apply EA or ED, were any legacies, URM or recruited athletes? That being said, if it is a majority “yes” with your stats you may have a higher likelihood of admission than the overall acceptance rate - that is still not a guarantee as things change year to year. Looking at your list, I’d guess (and it is only a guess) that you will get in to W&M, Virginia Tech, Penn State and Pitt. At Wake I’d guess you have a good chance, however, I think it would require ED - a lot of schools are taking a high percentage of students in the early rounds these days.