What Student Loans? High Schooler Offered Record Breaking $3-Million In Scholarships.
She didn't win the lottery, but thanks to a record breaking $3-million dollar scholarship, one grad won't be applying for any student loans.
Arianna Alexander, a recent high school graduate from Chicago's Kenwood Academy, was offered more than $3-million in collage scholarships and accepted to 26 colleges, including six of the eight Ivy League schools.
"It's like all the hard work paid off," Arianna said, adding that she was relieved. "I guess the excitement didn't really start until about a week later when I realized what was really happening."
Arianna has been waiting a long time for this pay day. The 18-year-old said she started preparing for college in the seventh grade so she could enter high school AP classes and eventually college.
Arianna said she started receiving the offers of admission and scholarship money in October—months before any of her peers. The offers weren't just early—they were big too. One day, Arianna was offered $100,000 in the span of three hours.
Arianna's father, Pierre Alexander, encouraged his daughter to break the scholarship record after another Kenwood grad received $1-million in scholarships a few years ago.
"I planted the seed in Arianna's mind that you can do the same thing. So when the process got started and a million was achieved, let's go for two. I said let's go for three, and she did it," he said in an interview with ABC News.
Arianna with her father, Pierre, who encouraged her to try and break the scholarship record.
Arianna has three older siblings who also attended college.
"It was a big blessing because I already put three through college. Now I don't have to worry too much about her," Pierre told ABC News.
Besides the scholarship amount and the number of admission offers she received, Arianna also broke another academic record.
The teen will be graduating from her high school with a 5.1 grade point average—on a 4.0 grade scale.
Besides getting straight A's, Arianna was also involved in band, softball, tennis, the math team, and was the president of her school's National Honor Society.
Arianna was her class' valedictorian at the recent graduation ceremony.
"It was a very very emotional graduation, and I thought being valedictorian would be the most special moment, but I think personally for me it was the remembrance we did for one of my best friends," she said.
There's no doubt that her accomplishments are amazing, but don't think Arianna just got lucky. She says none of this would have been possible without hard work.
"I've always dreamed of being an entrepreneur and my family, particularly my mother and father, have told me if I work hard I can achieve it," she said.
So, what's next for Arianna? With nearly 30 colleges to choose from, Arianna looked to her family and teachers for guidance when it came time to pick a school.
She accepted an offer from the University of Pennsylvania, where she will study business in the fall at the Wharton School of Business. Arianna hopes to be an entrepreneur and open her own restaurants.
Since she was a little girl, Arianna helped her grandmothers in the kitchen and this inspired her love of food and cooking.
"From that, I love cooking and want to put that cooking-entrepreneurial spirit together and open restaurants," she said. 
Her teacher, Paul Brush, encouraged Arianna to accept the offer from the school.
"As teachers, we have a big role to play with the lives that we have in our classroom," he told ABC News.
Arianna isn't the only student from Kenwood Academy who is scoring big scholarship money. Last year, Kenwood seniors were offered a combined $31-million in scholarship money, and every graduating student was accepted to college.
She will be getting a jump-start on her studies this summer when she takes a week-long course at The University of Pennsylvania before classes start in the fall.
Arianna says she's a little nervous to move away from Chicago and her family, but is looking forward to all the new connections she'll make at college.
"It's really a kind of family spirit at Wharton, and it's competitive, but it's a nice kind of competitive. It's like you're competing with with your brother and sister in a way," she said.
Arianna is already planning for the future restaurants she hopes to open, and has even started designing the menus. While her academic achievements might seem unbelievable, she said anybody can do it if they have the motivation.
"It was a lot of hard work that I had to put in," Arianna said. "I mean with support from family and friends I know it's possible, so i just want people to know that anybody else can do it. They just have to work hard."
Arianna was the valedictorian for Kenwood Academy's graduating class of 2015.
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