<p>Many students manipulate the system to receive the val title although they are not more brighter than their classmates. What do you think the school should do to determine the true val?</p>
<p>I think they should use a holistic process. With essays.</p>
<p>i think he means taking the easiest classes possible and getting a 4.0 vs taking 27 APs and having a 3.99</p>
<p>though i assume they use weighted grades, right?</p>
<p>not have one…seriiously…the systems are so varied and bizarre in some cases, what is the point, and don’t give me colleges, that is just a lazy way to look at applicants</p>
<p>My school doesn’t rank, and I think it makes everyone happier. Can’t help you there. <em>shrug</em></p>
<p>After several years of reading bizarro valedictorian threads and trying to wrap my brain around the odd ways vals are chosen across this great land, I’ve got to agree with cgm: we might as well bag the whole thing. If we’re not gonna do that, I think our hs handles the whole mess as equitably as possible:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Whatever it looks like, we don’t call it a valedictorian. It may be the graduating senior with the highest GPA who gives a speech at graduation, but it’s not a valedictorian, it’s a “Senior Scholar.” It’s surprising how this little word substitution defuses the whole situation, even in our competitive hs.</p></li>
<li><p>Our hs doesn’t rank; only the kid with the highest GPA is identified, so no one ever knows for certain who’s in contention or how close the contenders may be. The student is announced three weeks before graduation. Doesn’t figure into the college application process one bit.</p></li>
<li><p>The GPA is figured on an unweighted basis. There are folks whose eyes glaze over at this, but I think it’s the key to making the whole thing as “fair” as it gets, and as sane. Yes, in theory it would be possible to take the barest minimum number of credits at the least demanding level, amass a huge GPA, and get to give the graduation speech. But that won’t get you into Williams, Princeton, Vanderbilt, or Yale, where our most recent vals have gone. The Senior Scholar always takes as demanding a schedule as possible – they just do.</p></li>
<li><p>Once kids can’t rig their GPAs with scheduling tricks – if they can’t try to get out of gym or figure out when the competition will have to take their toughest course and take it later themselves to try to gain a fraction of a point – or whatever other acrobatics are out there – kids can decide what courses they want to take because they’re interested in them, or because they’ll need them for their future majors, or because they want to look good to MIT, which are better reasons than wanting to gain two-hundredths of a point on Susie Jones.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>The only way to get to be our “val” is to work your tail off for four years and concentrate on your own performance, not your neighbor’s. So I like the way we do it! Though I’d also be willing to see it dispensed with, since two-hundredths of a point is a slim nail to hang anything on. And one of my kids was the Senior Scholar (or, as her puzzled grandfather asked, “You mean the valedictorian?”). :)</p>
<p>Put everyone in the country in the same high school. Then we’ll know who is really the top high school student.</p>
<p>Several high schools around here have eliminated it. The speech at one is given by the senior class president; at another, by the president of the student council (even if the president isn’t a senior).</p>
<p>No exact ranking; no valedictorian; no manipulation; no effort and involvement by students, parents, teachers and administrators in the drama over a title which represents miniscule differences in gpa that are neither indicative of meaningful superiority in high school nor predictors of future success in life.</p>
<p>Our HS has the usual Val, Sal, Class President (usually popularity contest) and Student Council President (ditto) honors at graduation. But a few years ago the founders of a small company originally based in our town started a 10K per year scholarship, which usually goes to the most well-rounded member of the senior class (great but not best grades, great EC’s, usually athletics, great community service). It would be fitting if they can have that person give a speech…that person to me is the true Val…and is usually the most successful in college and beyond…</p>
<p>About the weighting issue - I was Sal instead of Val and a good friend lost a scholarship because my HS did not weight GPA’s in the day. At my D’s HS, they do weigh GPA’s, but there is definitely grade deflation, particularly in AP classes (hey, it’s a college course, grade like you were doing the work at one), so we still have students who avoid the most challenging courses in order to get the higher rank. There is one student in my D’s class who is notorious for dropping an honors course once the grade heat goes up, only to get a 100 in the regular class. The cycle begins the next year when she they let her back in to honors/AP again…</p>
<p>When college admissions officers look at her transcript, they’ll see that her course of study in high school was somewhat weak.</p>
<p>Mud wrestling</p>
<p>My high school didn’t rank. I can’t remember whether the president of the class did it or whether we voted for her to do it. She gave a nice little speech anyway. </p>
<p>I like the idea of recognizing scholarship, but maybe they ought to do it more like colleges - and give the top kids summa cum laudes. I’d like a system that recognizes the difficulty level of the coursework as well as the grades and that doesn’t penalize kids for taking courses like band or art. I’m sure any system can be manipulated to some extent though.</p>
<p>Will this work?
- Use unweighted GPA
- Require minimum number of Honors/AP classes
- Do not count some easy classes (but they contribute to total GPA)
- Use awards to add extra points. Awards weigh in order: national, regional, local
- Ask teachers to vote for one among the finalists (for extra points only)
- Ask classmates to vote for one among the finalists (for extra points only). Val should be loved and respected by classmates.</p>
<p>Oh, yeah. That always makes things more fair . Adding a subjective vote by teachers and students. Woo-hoo! Count me in. 
</p>
<p>Sorry. I just don’t see the problem some of y’all see. And in Texas, there will always be a val as it is required legislatively for the Valedictorian’s Tuition waiver (and it has to be THE student with the highest GPA). </p>
<p>Come up with the fairest system you can to define the top GPA, tell 'em the rules upfront, don’t change it midstream and then let them fight it out. It doesn’t say “best student” or “smartest student” folks. It’s for the highest GPA given these rules. That’s all. There could be other awards for those other “subjective” things, couldn’t there? “Most likely to succeed”? “Star student”? Heck, we had those in 1974. It can’t be that hard to do. (Now that I remember it “Star student” was for the highest SAT. Would that please some of y’all more?)</p>
<p>Y’all keep adding these other qualities based on your perceptions of what it should mean. Well, it doesn’t. It’s just highest GPA as calculated by that school’s formula. If your kid doesn’t want to compete - don’t compete. If you don’t like competition in academics , well…good luck with that whole “college and grad/professional school admissions” thing. ;)</p>
<p>Curm, I have to agree that val just means highest GPA, not “best” anything else. </p>
<p>But one thing that is different here than in your descriptions…nobody “fights” it out; there is no race, and nobody talks about competing with this one or that one. It just is. It is not a topic of discussion and I don’t think people go around discussing rank. I realize from many posts on CC, that is not the case elsewhere. There was no gaming or strategizing at our school. Having had a kid who was val, I can say she just is the type to want to do the best she can at school. If she wanted to fight it out or game anything, she could have taken easy courses as rank was unweighted. But she took the hardest schedule available and went beyond that. she would not be happy any other way as she craves challenge and doesn’t like courses that are too easy. It so happens that those who were ranked second, third and fourth, were NOT in the harder classes. Kids knew who the good students were, insofar as who was taking the hard track classes with them (due to size of school, there is usually one high level class per subject per grade), and honor rolls were published. But nobody was keeping score on GPAs or rank. This was not a race or topic of discussion ever. It mostly came up as to who was ranked where around the time it was announced senior year. No “duking it out” here.</p>
<p>“No “duking it out” here.” I’m proud for you, but Susan, there are those of us who think competition, when fairly judged, is a good thing. Proper rules (correctly and precisely worded and available to all to read) cut out most of the opps for gaming. Our school sees to that. It’s not that hard. It just takes institutional will. Edit: You see, we believe you can want to be the best at what you do AND be an intellectual. We don’t feel they are mutually exclusive, or declasse or bourgeouis. I understand that some feel differently. I’m sure the district could have an “opt out” form for y’all. ;)</p>
<p>Please don’t be “proud” for me Curm. I was simply desribing that the situation here is not as described elsewhere such as your school. I don’t think my D saw rank and val as a competition. She would have done the same thing in school whether there was a ranking or not. She just wants to do her very best in school. Being val and discussing ranks and what everyone else is taking or how many tenths one is off from another just does not happen here. That is all I am saying, after reading about “fighting it out” or “the race” or “the competition.” The highest GPA was rewarded and recognized for that person’s achievement. It wasn’t seen as competing against one another but simply for achieving in and of itself. Just a different kind of community I suppose.</p>
<p>
Do you automatically assume others don’t share the same traits and goals? I think the same things can be said about my D (and many other vals). They are the kids who turn in the extra credit project when they have a 100% average in the class and any point over 100 is lopped off. They do it for themselves, not any award. Now if there IS an award, they want it. I don’t see anything wrong with that. Can’t imagine why anybody would , but live and let live. Right?</p>
<p>Curm, I am not assuming about anyone else. I was only talking about the situation here. </p>
<p>As well, in reading about a race, competition, or fight to the top at your high school or others’, it was in contrast to my observations in our high school community where being val was not this major thing I see often discussed on CC or even in the news. The recognition at graduation was lovely. There was very little talk of who was ranked where and who would be val at school along the way. </p>
<p>My reflections and observations on this thread are not a “competition” between our kids, our high schools, or our communities. I’m simply describing how it is here and that it appears to be a different situation than I am reading about on this thread at other schools. “Different” doesn’t have to imply “better.”</p>