Seventeen-year-old Matthew Snider is challenging the perceived notions of what young men today are capable of — whether or not he intended to.

He graduates this week from Bloomfield Christian School in Bloomfield Hills and is headed in the fall to the U.S. Naval Academy — his choice among three U.S. major service academies to which he was accepted.

That alone is an impressive feat. The overall acceptance rate for those academies is roughly 10% — and he was welcomed to three of them.

He received a Congressional Nomination and an Offer of Appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, the United States Naval Academy and the United States Air Force Academy's Prep Program.

Snider received three of the 10 Congressional Nomination approvals that could come from his congressional representative, Haley Stevens, D-Birmingham, in a given year.

He plans study mechanical engineering and be part of the Naval Academy’s Division I men’s gymnastics team, building on his already established career as a competitive gymnast. He competed earlier this month in the 2025 Men’s and Women’s Development Program National Championships in Salt Lake City, placing 102th in the country overall and in the top 30 for still rings and floor exercise.

“I think service to the country is one of the greatest things you can do,” Snider says. “I’ve kind of been behind a desk my whole life up till now and I kind of want to do something.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do in my service. It was kind of gymnastics that started it, and once I had gotten more interested in the academies, I learned what they were about and was like — this is definitely something that I want.”

Snider's story stands out among a generation of kids and teens struggling at unprecedented rates with anxiety, depression and other mental health challenges. Young men in particular are wrestling with more femininized work and collegiate atmospheres and a nagging lack of purpose — all aggravated by more isolation since COVID.

You don’t sense any of that malaise in Snider, who says he was only remote learning for a couple months, during which time he made sure to be outside and connecting with people as much as possible.

He has worked at Troy Gymnastics in Troy in a variety of roles.

He’s also been working for his older brother’s lawn care company for a couple years — a skill he said helped elevate his ability to talk to people and persevere.

“I was the lead salesman along with one of my fellow graduates,” he says. “We tweak each others’ pitches. You have to change it, you know, if a kid opens the door, you have to make sure they’re the homeowner, if it’s the husband or wife, or if they look busy. If there’s, you know, dogs and kids in the background, you have to change it up.

“There were days that I would go out there, do three neighborhoods, eight hours a day, and nobody would say yes. And so I’d have to go back on there and see ‘what can I do differently?’”

It’s the kind of self-led, hands-on work that seems to be rarer for teen boys today than it used to be.

He and his brothers shovel snow for their surrounding neighbors every winter, a practice they began as young kids.

His commitment to being an athlete helped instill discipline (he wasn't recruited to the Naval Academy for gymnastics) and helped prepare him for the physical portion of acceptance to the academies.

But he also credits his family and school with valuing an entrepreneurial spirit and helping prepare him for adulthood.

He says his parents were very strict with screen usage and encouraged them to work out daily. Kids in his family aren't allowed to have social media accounts until they are 18, and the school doesn't allow phone access during any part of the school day.

Bloomfield Christian follows a classical education model which emphasizes history, literature, logic and rhetoric. Public speaking is required and practiced beginning in Kindergarten, the grade at which Snider began attending.

Last week he completed his “Senior Thesis,” a 15-page paper written, reduced, memorized and defended before a panel of three judges, teachers, parents and peers — the capstone requirement of graduating from the school.

Those are seemingly high standards for teens today — but clearly, they benefited him.

Of the qualifications for acceptance to the service academies, Snider says he thinks the interview portion and his leadership record likely stood out — which he credits his family, his school, friends, church and community with helping him build.

Snider is graduating magna cum laude with a 3.8 GPA on a 4.0 scale, and scored above average on the ACT and SAT.

“Even though I wasn’t scoring as high as I’m sure other applicants were, I was continuing to improve and try to improve,” he says. “So, they like that.”