A Louisiana high school student has won more than $9 million in scholarships, a sum that puts him close to setting a U.S. record.
Dennis Barnes has received support from 125 colleges and universities after earning a 4.98 GPA from International High School New Orleans, among other academic accomplishments.
He hopes to raise more than $10 million in scholarships on offer. School officials say he’s waiting for responses from several of the 200 colleges he’s applied to.
The Barnes’s Scholarship offer success rivals another Louisiane Scholarship, Normandie Cormier. In 2019, while preparing to graduate from Lafayette’s Early College Academy, Cormier received nearly $9 million in scholarships from nearly 140 schools.
Cormier told the Guardian on Tuesday that her aid eventually grew to $9.4 million and she has applied for recognition from Guinness World Records.
She said Guinness told her it hadn’t found anyone with more scholarship offers in the United States, but that the organization couldn’t set a world record because of the different higher education systems around the world.
A Guinness spokesman confirmed that it does not keep a record of most scholarship offers to a single person. International High School officials said they contacted the organization about recognizing Barnes.
Cormier said she hopes news of Barnes’ success will prompt other high school students to explore the financial assistance packages available in the United States, especially given that more than 45 million Americans have lost $1.7 trillion amid the debt crisis.
Barnes is President of the National Honor Society and his fluency in Spanish has earned him a Diploma from the Spanish Department of Education, Culture and Sport and a Commendation from the Spanish Honorary Consul in New Orleans.
School officials said he began earning college credit through a dual enrollment program offered by Southern University in New Orleans, a historic local black institution.
