NSLI-Y is pretty prestigious; it’s a State Dept sponsored govt exchange program.
I will say, however, that I think the student needs to be taking appropriate courses that scale with him (Heritage Speakers at Concordia, NSLI-Y, some kind of indepenent study that the counselor is willing to write about) instead of intro-level courses (BYU, Russian 20) or language testing. This is because there is a difference between “I am interested in Russian seriously but my school doesn’t offer it, so I did the best I could” and “I took the most basic classes to fulfill a requirement.”
Learning a new language (or another language) can also be important in its own way. English is my first language, I’m a heritage Chinese speaker, learned French in high school, and picked up Spanish in college. In real, job-related situations (and I’m a math major), those language skills have made a difference. I will say that even if the student knows Russian, I’ve found learning a language academically much different than my heritage language, and learning them both has given me different appreciations about language (which, one could argue, is important in comp sci).