Georgia teen accepted to 50 colleges, earns more than $1M in scholarships

A Georgia high school student has been accepted to more than 50 colleges and earned more than $1 million in scholarships.

Jakelia Baker, 17, is valedictorian of Lucy C. Laney High School in Augusta and spent hours applying to colleges and for scholarships, according to WJBF.com. Jakelia hasn't settled on a school yet, but she's been accepted to some of the best in the country, including Penn State University and the University of Michigan.

"My momma kept me on track," she told WJBF. “We would use weekends and sometimes when I was at games I would be doing college applications.”

By "games," she means basketball, volleyball, golf, tennis and soccer — all teams she played on at Laney.  Beyond sports and academics, the scholar also served on the National Honor Society, student council, math team and academic decathlon.

"Once volleyball is over then you have basketball and then basketball math team academic Decathalon still and then a little bit of student council, National Honor Society, and then after Christmas break you have soccer, tennis, and golf and then a little bit of marching band still, and then math team competition starts coming in," Jakelia told WFXG.

Even with all that, she maintained a 4.1 GPA. Of course, that schedule didn’t leave a lot of time for other pursuits.

"I couldn't hang out with my friends, or I would miss out on parties or other opportunities, and I would have challenges at school," she told WJBF.

“Every now and then you’ll have the students who come along and they’re like that go-to students in the school,”

Bill Dunbar, Jakelia’s AP Literature teacher, told WFXG. “If you want to show off the school, you pull in Jakelia Baker."

This article was written by Nancy Clanton with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Cox Media Group