Berthinia Rutledge-Brown remembers the first time she sat in a room full of parents whose children had gone to elite colleges.

“I cried because I realized that there was a chance that my child would get the education he deserves — the one I could not afford to pay for,” she said.

Her son, it turns out, has several options — and they will all be free.

Last week Ms. Rutledge-Brown’s son, Micheal Brown, opened the last of his big envelopes, and put an exclamation point at the end of an impressive streak: Mr. Brown, 17, got into all 20 highly selective colleges he applied to, all of which offered him a full ride through a combination of merit- and financial-based scholarships and grants.

“He actually earned it,” said Ms. Rutledge-Brown, a drug counselor. “I always knew Mike would get into a good school. I always knew he’d get good scholarship support. But I never imagined this.”