Madisyn Turner is the third person in her family to graduate as the valedictorian from Columbus High School and to graduate from high school with an associate’s degree already in-hand.
While participating in extracurricular activities and maintaining good grades in her high school courses, Turner was also taking six college courses each semester in order to also complete her associate’s degree in psychology summa cum laude from East Mississippi Community College. She didn’t just stop there, though. Turner also received more than $1 million in scholarship offers from several colleges and universities to continue her education.
She is the daughter Brian and Aubra Turner, and her older sister Marian Turner was the CHS valedictorian in 2019. Her cousin Avani Poindexter was last year’s 2021 CHS valedictorian, and they all attend the same church, Turner Chapel AME Church.
“(Marian) has always inspired me to just keep going, to always be your best and to always achieve the highest achievements,” Turner said. “She inspired me to keep going and be like her and become valedictorian for my class as well.”
Turner will head to Washington, D.C. in the fall to attend Howard University, but she won’t be surrounded entirely by strangers. While she is looking forward to meeting new friends, she has family in the area and two cousins that attend Howard. She has officially been offered a spot on the Howard University choir, too.
The high school graduate plans to get her bachelor’s of psychology at Howard in the next two years then get her master’s degree. She is interested in clinical psychology or adolescent psychology.
“I’m very excited and I’m looking forward to the college experience and continuing my education with a good psychology program up north,” Turner said. “I really want to go into clinical psychology or adolescent psychology to help out with the youth and their mental health.”
Throughout both her and her sister’s lives, their mother kept binders full of everything the girls have been involved in from choir programs to awards. Aubra Turner said there are at least four thick binders full of things Madisyn and Marian were involved in, and she had to create an entirely new binder to keep track of all of Madisyn’s scholarship offers.
“Madisyn received over $1 million in scholarship offers, which is unheard of for a student to receive that much in scholarships out of Columbus High School,” Aubra said. “… I’ve been keeping books on my girls, tracking them since they were little, from kindergarten all the way through. I’ve kept just about every program that they’ve participated in, every award. I have stacks of books that I’ve been keeping a log of everything.”
Aubra said it took a lot of prayer for both girls to get where they are, and she advises parents to start helping their children prepare for college as early as their junior year of high school.
“It took a lot of prayer and encouragement along the way,” Aubra said. “I put everything into my girls to push them to be all that they can be and to strive for the best, so this was really a major accomplishment for both of them. … This was her last year and she was completing a lot of her major classes, she was having to deal with tests. She was participating in many, including band and the different choirs, and she was playing golf. It was a lot having to make sure she was filling out all of the paperwork for those scholarships and staying on top of deadlines. I encourage all parents to get started now. If they have a senior, get started over the summer and don’t wait till the fall to start doing it. It’s actually something that needs to be done the junior year if they can do it.”
Madisyn said she notices the difference from her freshman year of high school to who she’s become now, and credits her high school experience at CHS for helping her come out of her shell.
“Being at CHS really helped me get out of my shell,” Turner said. “When I was a freshman, I was really shy, and I didn’t really want to talk to anybody, but now that I’ve graduated, I’m more social. I’m more comfortable being open with anybody, and it’s helped me to be able to adjust to a future college life at Howard.”
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