Amari Shepard, 17, has been offered $9.2 million in scholarships including full tuition at Spelman University where she plans to attend in the fall.
Amari Shepard, 17, has been offered $9.2 million in scholarships including full tuition at Spelman University where she plans to attend in the fall.
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Amari Shepard, 17, has been offered $9.2 million in scholarships including full tuition at Spelman University where she plans to attend in the fall.
Amari Shepard, 17, has been offered $9.2 million in scholarships including full tuition at Spelman University where she plans to attend in the fall.
For the second year in a row, a New Orleans public school student has racked up over $9 million in college scholarships — just shy of what is believed to be a $10 million national record set by another New Orleans graduate last year.
Frederick Douglass High School graduate Amari Shepard, 17, has been offered $9.2 million in scholarships including full tuition at Spelman University — her dream school for as long as she can remember.
“I knew that to go to Spelman, I was going to have to be the best. It was not an easy task at all,” she said. “It was all about hard work.”
Shepard was accepted into 162 institutions, including Wellesley College and Rice University. With plans to leave college debt free, she applied to multiple schools with hopes to get a full ride to at least one, she said.
But Spelman, the historically Black university for women in Atlanta with an average 4.1 GPA admissions score, was always front and center for its sense of “community and sisterhood” she said.
The school also topped the list because of its close proximity to her dad’s side of the family.
Shepard’s father died when she was young, and she was able to find a balance between coping with grief, school work and extracurricular activities. As a freshman, she also faced the unexpected loss of her grandmother, whom she lived with during the pandemic and who often drove her to and from school.
Neither lived to see Shepard’s 5.0 high school grade point average or the associate’s degree she obtained through Bard Early College before giving her classes’ valedictory speech last week.
Many others in her life, however, have stood in awe of her accomplishments over the years.
“She is by far the most driven, ambitious student I have ever worked with,” said Stephanie Hinton, a teacher at Frederick Douglass. “But it’s never at the expense of others. That’s the one thing I will remember the most about Amari,” she said.
Shepard’s feat follows New Orleans student Dennis “Maliq” Barnes, who made national waves last year for receiving nearly $10 million in college scholarships, possibly setting a national record, the school believed at the time.
But other media outlets reported this month that Georgia senior Madison Crowell was awarded $14.7 million worth of scholarships with 231 college acceptance letters.
In addition to academic talent, the rise in high-dollar scholarships comes as the college application process becomes more centralized, making it easier to apply to multiple colleges without submitting a new application each time.
In the fall, Shepard plans to take up political science on a pre-law school track.
Shepard’s tuition, room and board are covered by Spelman’s Dovey Johnson Roundtree Scholarship, a highly competitive award.
For her non-tuition needs, Shepard was awarded $60,000 from KIPP Public Schools national Goldberg scholars program to be released as a stipend across four years of school. KIPP operates eight schools under its New Orleans charter network, including Frederick Douglass High.
Other scholarships Shepard received include $10,000 from Pelicans player Larry Nance’s “Zero Hunger Challenge” where students competed to create a plan that could end hunger in New Orleans. Shepard also nabbed a $1,000 District Superintendent scholarship, $500 from the National Women of Achievement program and $1,500 from her school’s alumni association.
Email Joni Hess at joni.hess@theadvocate.com.
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