This problem doesn’t occur at schools that use a 100 scale for grades. There is a big difference between an A with a 93 average and an A with a 98 average.
At our school students with a 93 gpa are no where near the same caliber as students with a 98 gpa, and there is no way on earth that 222 students are academic equals regardless of a 4.0 gpa.
Two years ago our Val and Sal were separated by a one hundredth of a point-they were certainly academic equals, but our school has a policy in place, and as with most things in life there can only be one winner. Not a bad lesson for kids to learn.
Our local HS uses weighted GPA for Val/sal and top 10, so nothing is gained by taking the non-honors or non AP classes. Since the students with the highest GPA’s are not always the ones the school chooses to give awards to, it’s nice that the kids with the top GPA’s get this little bit of recognition.
It would be interesting to see what the school profile letter says next year, as it accompanies each of the student transcripts. Most might say: “Our district’s students are so bright that we have 222 valedictorians. Unfortunately, this student isn’t one of them.”
@FallGirl - that’s exactly the problem - the kids who get the honor are the kids who avoid unweighted classes, thus they are being rewarded for doing less.
A common scenario- the amazing musician who has perfect grades in honors classes but elects to also take orchestra will not be valedictorian, instead it goes to a kid who avoids all unweighted class and uses the extra free time to sleep in late and hang out with their friends.
Bldrdad- In my D’s class 3 of the top 10 students (D, her BFF and another close friend) were enrolled in Drama (unweighted) for 4 years. The val and sal got up during the ceremony to sing with the chorus (you had to take the unweighted chorus class to participate). At least one other child in the top 10 was a yearbook editor (again, unweighted class).
These kids were talking difficult weighed classes ALONG WITH these unweighted electives. Several were athletes. Several were student leaders. D spent 20-25 hours per week dancing for her studio competition team as well as the school team. Not much time to sleep in.
The reality was that these kids were not only top students but were very active in other areas.
Our school recognizes the top 20 students with the highest GPA in the class, with the val and sal giving the speeches. All students have the opportunity to take honors or APs, except for gym and health. Since these must be taken by all the students, everybody has the same opportunity to be the top students. What I like in our school is that they also recognize the top 20 OUTSTANDING students. These students are the ones who might have excelled in other areas besides academics. I actually think being an outstanding student is more impressive (and this is the mom of two vals.)
Wow. You must have an incredible amount of APs in your district, or the kids must take fewer classes. In our district we have a ton of APs but a kid still can’t take all APs from sophomore through senior years. Our kids can take up to 8 classes a semester, although most take 6. You would have to take 24 APs during your last 3 years to not have room for band, etc. The highest GPA in history at one of the high schools that my kids went to included 19 APs. At the other HS (same district) it was maybe 12?.
Edited to add: all our HSs have 1 val and 1 sal based on weighted GPA.
I think staying in a fine arts class pretty much rules you out of the top slots atybkids’ school too. They take 7 classes, so there’s room for 2/3 electives depending on whether you’re still in a foreign language. There are defintely enough “extra” AP classes to fill those spots junior and senior year. 2 years of health and PE is required so they all have those as unweighted, usually freshman and sophomore years. And one year of fine arts. But if you’re still in band junior and senior year, all the kids taking Econ, doubling up on science, taking AP psych–you won’t outrank them.
Smart people work at top colleges and I think they can read GPA numbers the same way anyone else can. I would bet money that they could give a rip whether a kid with a 4.2 is technically a valedictorian or not.
I think they care about what classes the student took, what grades they got, what their overall performance was, etc. To do something like give up band or orchestra because you won’t be one of many “valedictorians” strikes me as incredibly short sited and foolish. Just my opinion.
Wouldn’t all these 222 vals be able to put that they were their school’s val on the common app under achievements? I mean technically they are a valedictorian and colleges wouldn’t know it was tied with 222 people.
Why are you guys making such a big deal about this. Sure at my school there were 60 valedictorians and I was semi annoyed that i got the same recognition with a 4.4 as my classmate with a 4.01, but colleges see the distinction. Putting valedictorian on your record won’t make a difference because the common app asks for you rank. Even if a school has 222 valedictorians the 201st student will have to put 201/700 or whatever the class size is on their app.
@LeviAckermen Well, probably not as val is decided pretty late into senior year, after college apps go out. But I get what you mean; I put “track captain” on my college apps, though there are 6-7 captains for the team of ~120 girls (one captain for each discipline; sprints, throwing, etc.) Though I do think that’s slightly different as they didn’t call EVERYBODY captain, I did feel a little bit like I was cheating or implying I was the sole captain.
Our high school established a valedictory class. A student has to take a certain number of AP and/or honors/university in the high school classes and have a certain average. The school grades based on a 100 scale and there is no weighting. A Val/sal is selected from this group based on average, EC’s etc. I think they mostly get it right.
I think the valedictory class is a little too broad in my opinion, since it includes honors and also University in the High school classes in the count. So one could be in the Val class having taken honors and univ in the high school and hardly any AP’s. There is a huge jump from these to the AP courses in our school. On the other hand, I am glad there is a single Val and sal.
How to make the term valedictorian meaningless? Don’t appoint valedictorians and don’t rank. At CK’s school, transcripts and test scores paired with the school profile/report tell a college all it needs to know. This policy eliminates all sorts of foolishness.
@kelsmom, how would you propose picking one Val if you have a tie?
Pick the one they like the most. That seems to be how a lot of things are given to students in high schools.
I’m kidding (sort of …).
If it’s really, really tied - which it rarely used to be, but now seems to be (a 222-way tie, perhaps) - then figure it out. If it’s too tough to call, then go with the summa/magna/cum laude (which I prefer, anyway).
My high school class of over 500 had one val and 2 sals. The next “honor” was for those with a GPA of 3.0 or above. Lots of “medals” worn at our graduation. But it really didn’t matter. That’s the thing. If someone is clearly the “top” student, it means something. If it’s just a whole bunch of students being honored, the honor loses its meaning. It becomes more like getting the “trophy” for participation in t-ball.
If the issue is that no one will stay in the band or take an UW class, then schools can simply limit the number of honors/AP classes a student can take. At my kids’ HS, all classes were either honors or AP (this was a private school), so even PE has an “honors weighting” (lol)…but students could not take more than 8 APs total for all 4 years (1 frosh, 1 soph, 3 jr, 3 sr) . Since they had 8 classes per year, that left plenty of space for kids to take band or art or even a study hall…and not hurt their GPAs.
The label does not matter. D’s school did not name val’s or sal’s. Nobody cared, including colleges. All that is important is the HS GPA and class standing. Class standing is determined by colleges (when not reported by HS) using student GPA and class profile. Who really cares about all the hoopla, if a kid is at the top of the class, colleges will know that, val., sal., opr whatever else is used…or NOT.
Actually, several colleges told us that they even strip down the weighted GPA to unweighted and recalculated weighted GPA themselves.
So, if HS is into naming val’s, sal’s, and provide the student ranking, it is a waste of time on the part of the HS.
