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Mississippi student Dana Bolden has received $1.4 million in college scholarships just two months into her senior year of high school.
Bolden, a 17-year-old student at Jim Hill High School in Jackson, Mississippi, said she started looking into applying for colleges and scholarships over the summer before school began in August.
"Once school started, I just decided to go ahead and knock it out and start applying to a bunch of schools," Bolden told Good Morning America. "I didn't think that I would get to this point of $1.4 million in scholarships, but I'm very grateful that I am and I'm very grateful that I have the opportunity to get this far."
Frank Branch, an academic advisor at Jim Hill, said it's rare for a student to rack up over a million dollars in scholarship money so early in the school year.
"Every year, we normally would have $1 million, $2 million, or $3 million babies, as we call them. But this is the first time that we've had anyone achieve over a million dollars in September," Branch said. "Normally, this will happen in January, so I'm very proud of Dana."
Bolden is a member of the Jim Hill High School Marching Band and is active in speech and debate and student government. She credits her mentors, one of whom is school president Bobby Brown, for helping her achieve her goals.
"I almost gave up. I tried to give up. I had so many people push me to be better and to do better, and I'm so grateful that I did, because without them, I would not have this," she said. "I have so many mentors who are very adamant on me being successful because they've been where I've been and they've made it, so they want me to be as successful as them because they know I can do it."
Bolden, who applied to over 60 colleges, and for about 80 scholarships, has been accepted to 34 schools and scholarships thus far. The high school senior said she hopes to attend Duke University, where she would like to major in biology to pursue a career as a trauma surgeon.
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