New Orleans Teen’s Scholarship Haul Is $3.7M From 115 Schools

NEW ORLEANS, LA — Antoinette Love is going to college. The 18-year-old New Orleans high school senior has only one decision to make: which to choose among the 115 colleges that offered her a remarkable total of $3.7 million in scholarships.

The International High School of New Orleans said that accomplishment puts her in an elite class among high school seniors. And 18 years ago, it seemed to her parents, Anthony and Yolanda Love, to be an almost impossible feat.

Antoinette weighed only 4.4 pounds when she was born six weeks prematurely. But she beat the odds, leaving the hospital 23 days later, The Times-Picayune of New Orleans reported. Then, when she was 2, she was attacked by a dog that almost pulled off her face. She survived that, too, and her scars are barely visible today.

Fast forward 16 years to the flurry of college acceptance letters. Love began applying to colleges last fall, and the first college that accepted her application offered her a $72,000 scholarship. Soon after, she began receiving not only acceptance letters, but offers for millions of dollars in scholarships.

“I started applying in September, and just kept applying and applying until my tiny mailbox at home was suddenly overflowing with letter after letter and dozens of scholarship offers,” the teen told news station WVUE.

Love, who plans to major in elementary education when she enrolls in college this fall, told The Times-Picayune she will spend the next several weeks visiting schools and will make her decision by May 1.

That will mean time away from what she considers one of her most important responsibilities — helping her parents raise her four siblings, who range in age from 9 to 15. Her 15-year-old brother has cystic fibrosis.

Love has maintained a 3.5 grade point average as a dual-enrolled student at Delgado Community College. A gifted painter, she has been inducted into several honors groups at International High School of New Orleans, a college prep charter school open to Louisiana residents. Those groups include the National Senior Beta Club, the National Honor Society, the National English Honor Society and Rho Kappa National Social Studies Honor Society.

The school’s headmaster, Sean Wilson said in a statement to The Times-Picayune that Love is “a hard-working scholar” who has always helped her classmates with their studies.

Yolanda Love told newspaper her daughter’s feat shows her siblings what can be accomplished through hard work and the world “what kind of kids New Orleans has.”

“We have so much going on in our lives to where this that one moment where it’s something good and something positive, not only for our family, but for the city, too,” Yolanda Love said.