The HBCU have one application for 50 of them. That may have helped. “students can also fill in a Common Black College Application (CBCA) , which allows students to apply for any number of 50 Historically Black Colleges and Universities with just a single application.” It’s just $35 to apply to all.
The boy attends a charter school in New Orleans. Louisiana is consistently ranked 49th or 50th in the country for quality of K-12 education and for percentage of people going to college. New Orleans has one of the highest poverty rates of any big city in the US. I imagine the guidance counselor and school administration were trying to show the other students that they are “college material” and that many colleges would love to have them as students. I still think it was a bad idea, but they probably had good intentions.
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Still doesn’t seem right and maybe then his school was using him . The common app, HBCU apps, etc. seem to definitely keep encouraging these types of things. As well as the publicity, social media accounts of college acceptances that get attention.
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Updated article claims it
breaks the previous record documented in the Guinness Book of World Records, held by a Lafayette high school senior who received $8.7 million in scholarships in 2019.
I found nothing at www.guinnessworldrecords.com.
Interesting that the previous “record” holder, last year’s “winner”, and the new “record holder” are all from Louisiana.
The previous “record holder” attends a school classified in USNews’ Regional University listings with a 95% accept rate. Last year’s winner is at an 85% accept rate school. Both have median admitted SATs of 1070. Just for context.
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And he is “holding out” to see if he breaks $9M in combined scholarship offer $. Sorry but that is a misplaced goal/priority.
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Wonder how many schools he applied to in total? That also has to be some sort of ridiculous “record”.
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Every year there is a story or so about some student who gets into some extreme # of colleges and the combined scholarship offers total some high amount of $ (its really a misnomer to laid they earned millions in scholarships, but thats how its presented). This year this New Orleans student got into over 125 colleges and is hanging on to try to see over $10M in combined scholarship offers. While obviously this is a very deserving student, these stories just rub me the wrong way for a variety of reasons. Even if 65 or so of the acceptances were completed on the Black Common app, that still leaves an excessive number of applications, work for counselors/school and cost if not all the application fees were waived. And sorry, the focus is misplaced if the target goal is the record-breaking $10M in offered scholarship $ (unclear how much is need vs merit based). I often wonder where these kids end up, if they have to qualify each year for the continued scholarship money and how they fare. I hope they get good guidance. Record breaker: Teen accepted at 125 colleges, earns $9 million in scholarships – KIRO 7 News Seattle
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Agreed! It is being discussed in this thread. 
Thanks, @DramaMama2021 . Never know how to best find these subjects in the different threads with different titles. Would live to know if there is a follow up on any of the kids that were subjects of previous news blasts. I do remember one who chose a small school either near or where a sibling went (its been a few years, can’t recall all the details), but it was clear that the family couldn’t afford the school for the second child. Such unfortunately poor advising to this student.
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Here’s an interesting opposite outcome. Wish more realized this can and does happen like the positive outcome here: Student Rejected From All Of The Colleges He Applied To Shows What Life Is Like 2 Years Later | YourTango
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Posted above, 2019 and 2021 “100+/$millions” kids went to schools with 85-95% accept rates and ~1070 SAT medians.
You can hunt down their LinkedIn profiles if interested in mor details.
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Ack my typo gets copied! Lol
With great aid….I hope.
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However, whenever that student’s path is suggested here to students who got shut out, the suggestion is met with disdain. According to the linked page, “Ethan went to community college for two years, then transferred to Berkeley.”
That’s the point. He went to a cc and then transferred to Berkeley Haas.
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Yes, and that is a path that certainly exists for many students.
But if you mention it here, the disdainful reaction here seems to be even worse than when suggesting that a NJ resident student attend Rutgers.
And its time for posters to read these success stories and open their eyes.
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anyone heard where this young student is attending?
Based on another article I read, he’s supposed to be announcing today (May 3rd).
And here’s a quote from that article that I find very hard to believe:
“Breaking a record wasn’t necessarily a goal or something I set out to do,” Barnes said.
“I am just a college-bound student seeking somewhere where I’m comfortable that has a great program in my major and that’s going to compensate me financially,” he added.
Right. Because it’s so hard to find a school with a great CS program these days. Such an obscure major.
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what i dont like about this all is that the true situation isn’t told. wish the headlines were something like " student gets 120 scholarships; each scholarship turns out to be about half of the cost of college; a few are even higher" or something like that. because reading these headlines doesnt in any way show that the kid will most likely be paying for college.