Cleverconman

Say, hypothetically, that I come from a highly competitive, affluent, suburban East-coast high school. How much would you say being valedictorian means to top tier schools (granted the corresponding high SATs + ECs + Awards) ?

hmom5

A lot, the very top schools have a very high percentage of vals and sals--40% at Dartmouth last year and probably quite a bit higher at HYPS.

morrismm

Does valedictorian mean anything?

It means you are #1! Other than that, it depends. I live in a very small city in a NE state. The surrounding towns are much smaller. The local daily paper publishes the area vals ans sals in the spring. My kids often (usually) had much higher gpa's than area vals, but were "only" top 5 or so in their class.

Top schools like to publish (brag) how many vals ands sals are in their entering class, so it cannot hurt.

jkaufman

Yea if you are a val you should hold your head up high. You got all A's throughout hs, that is quite an accomplishment.

dododo121

omg CONNOR!!! u use CC???? since when??

mcvcm92

It definitely means a lot.

swimcatsmom

More of a "doesn't hurt" than a big help for the very competitve schools. Our val from a couple of years back did not get into her dream school, Harvard. She was really brilliant too. State Ap scholar and all sorts of other awards. She was accepted at several good schools including a JHU and Duke. I think she ended up at either JHU or Duke.

Pawn_H7

Honestly? No.

TheFutureIsHere

I think it depends on the high school you come from. At my HS, a lot of #1s have gotten rejected from schools that accepted #3, 5, 6, etc. due to differences in SATs, ECs, or hooks. The top 15 or so kids all have straight A's throughout high school, so there is hardly any difference between kids in the top 5%.
However, if you are val of a very large, competitive school, plus you have consistently high SAT scores, this means a lot, and while it won't guarantee you HYPSMblahblah admission, it certainly gives you a better shot than the 95% of other applicants who aren't valedictorians.

collegebound_91

when you think about it, every hs in the nation (or most) have a val. You could go to a terrible or noncompetitive school where the average sat is like a 1300 out of 2400 and be val with a 2.something gpa.
When colleges look at your school report, they will be able to see the rigor of your school and how they compare to other schools. I know in my school, getting one B, even with all honors/ap classes, can drop you from #12 to #40 (this happened to my friend). The gpa diff between top students is like 0.0001. So being even in the top 20 is just as impressive as being val. This is why there are sats, sat2's and ap tests to see how you compare to students around the counrty, not just in your school.

from a top affluent school, being val matters, but not being val wont hurt you bc they will be able to see how competitive it is.

gwu_girl

Not really. My graduating class' GPAs are so close that we have 40 Valedictorians. I personally think it should really only be one person. 40 takes away from the value, but yeah.