High school senior shatters college scholarship record with more than $9M in offers

Dennis Barnes has broken the record for most college scholarships received by a college-bound high school senior in U.S. history, receiving more than $9 million in scholarships in acceptances from more than 170 colleges and universities.

A student at the International High School of New Orleans, Barnes says he never initially set out to break the record. But once it became a reality, he began to understand the gravity of the accomplishment.

“To be able to set the standard and say, as a Black man, I could do more than dribble a ball, I could do more than throw a football or run the fastest — to say that we are mentally and academically capable of surpassing expectations, it's something that I feel good to be leading in right now,” Barnes, who goes by his middle name, Maliq, told Yahoo News.

“I would like to use this influence to encourage others, other people in the Black community, and just upcoming juniors that are gonna be seniors next year, to just keep pushing forward.”

The West Bank New Orleans native, who is just 16 years old, has applied to more than 200 schools across the U.S., some of which he is still waiting to hear back from. He said he initially applied to a handful of schools with bigger names that interested him, including Ivy League schools and historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs. But as time went on, the more schools he was accepted to and the more scholarship funding he received, he didn’t want to slow down.

At some point last fall, he said, “it got to a point where it was brought to my attention that I'm on the verge of breaking a world record,” and he resolved, “I might as well see it through.”

In most cases, Barnes applied to each school individually, with almost all the application fees waived. He also applied to 20 schools at once using the Common App, a nonprofit that simplifies the college application process.

Now, he says, he hopes to net more than $10 million in scholarships by the end of the week, before he makes the final decision on a college on May 2.

Barnes’s feat surpasses the previous record of $8.7 million in scholarships set by another Louisiana student in 2019, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. That student, 18-year-old Normadie Cormier, from Lafayette, La., was accepted into over 130 colleges and universities, including 16 full rides.

Barnes’s school says it's now working to get in contact with the record-tallying company to make his new record official. The school’s leader, Adierah Berger, added that given Barnes’s ambition, she’s not at all surprised about what he’s been able to achieve.

“Dennis is the ideal student,” Berger, CEO and head of school at the International High School of New Orleans, told Yahoo News. “His drive, ambition and talent have been evident since he joined the school as a sophomore. It’s no surprise he set this world record, and we could not be more proud of him as he heads to college and on to change the world.”

The school is a public, college-preparatory charter school located in the central business district of New Orleans that was established in 2010.

While Barnes takes great pride in his work in the classroom, and has achieved a 4.98 cumulative GPA, he’s also passionate about being more than just a strong academic student. He speaks fluent Spanish and has served as the executive president of the National Honor Society.

He was also recently a part of the school’s basketball team and played football earlier in high school. But more than anything else, he admits, he loves spending free time with family and friends and indulging in one of his favorite pastimes after school: sleeping.

“I know a lot of times, I come home from school and I just go to sleep after a long day,” he said, as a sheepish grin appeared across his face. “It kind of depends on how I'm feeling.”

For the past two years, Barnes has been dual-enrolled at Southern University of New Orleans, where he’s earned 27 college credits while still in high school. This, he says proudly, is thanks to earning all A’s in those classes. Once he matriculates fully to college in the fall, he plans to study computer science and then, after college, go to law school.

Ten years from now, he sees himself as a successful lawyer just beginning to reap the rewards of all his years of schooling, a dream he sees as well within his reach, thanks to being open-minded to all kinds of people and cultures.

“I think that that's going to be a point of my life where I'm starting to actually grow into my wealth,” Barnes said, adding that he wants to be “attaining wisdom and just growing as a person.”

“I make it my business to at least hear everybody out, because that can be beneficial to me,” he said. “I listen to what everybody has to say, and I just use my personal judgment. I process it and I use it to make a decision instead of having a closed mind. … To me, that just seems ignorant.”

Cover thumbnail photo illustration: Jack Forbes; photos: IHSNO, Image 1 Photography