High school grad accepted to 20 colleges, earns thousands in scholarships

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – A recent Columbus High School graduate has been accepted into 20 colleges and earned 22 scholarships.

Marian Turner was the valedictorian in her high school class, while also graduating Summa Cum Laude from East Mississippi Community College in a dual enrollment program.

For Turner, it’s always been her goal to go to college, so she took to the books and worked hard to make that dream come true.

“It was really shocking when everything started to come in,” said Turner. “The scholarships and the acceptances, that’s when it really hit me that I’ve been doing well.”

In fact, she’s been doing so well that a picture of Turner and all of her accolades are gaining a lot of attention on social media.

The recent graduate finished high school with a 4.5 GPA and racked up more than $400,000 in scholarships.

“It’s a shock for me because when I was coming into my senior year I didn’t expect it, so just seeing how much work that I’ve put into it and being able to receive that much money, it’s getting me into my dream school,” said Turner.

Her dream school is Spelman College, which is where the high achieving scholar earned herself a full academic scholarship.

“I will be majoring in international studies and Spanish, a double major,” said Turner. “I will be focusing on international development on a pre-law track. In the future, I hope my career deals with global diplomacy, and my long term goal is to become a U.S. ambassador and learn a second language, Spanish.”

The young scholar said she’s always done well in school.

However, she admitted, receiving all of her recent success was a bit overwhelming.

“I’m not surprised, but I am surprised at the same time, because I do know that I work hard for everything,” Turner expressed. “I try my best to do as much as I can.”

“She excelled in everything,” said Freda Dismukes, Director of the Freshman Academy at Columbus High School. She made straight A’s since the sixth grade. She did everything with a smile.”

Turner credited her family and school leaders for her success.

Now she’s hoping to serve as an inspiration for others following in her footsteps.

“Since sixth grade, she came in focused with an end in mind and her end in mind was to be number one, and she ended up being that,” said Dismukes. “It just lets me know when you have your mind set on something like Marian did, if you give everything 100% all the time, you’re going to succeed and she did.”

“Being from Columbus you see a lot of things happening here,” the young scholar described. “My main thing for me to achieve all of this is to be able to be a role model for those around me.”

Turner isn’t the only one in her household to receive academic achievement this school year.

Her younger sister, Madisyn Turner, received the highest GPA among the freshman class at CHS.