<p>Valedictorians have to be extremely hard working. They usually are plenty bright enough, but do not have to be super bright to have achieved that spot. In fact, some inherently brighter people do not care to work hard enough to attain first in the class (or second, or third). They do well enough by not working very hard at all.</p>
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<p>At Caltech:
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<p>Doug Osheroff</p>
<p><a href=“http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1996/osheroff-autobio.html[/url]”>http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1996/osheroff-autobio.html</a></p>
<p>That’s really nice!</p>
<p>NSM, you made my point better</p>
<p>And I think there are many bright people who work really hard, but don’t Color in the Lines as expected</p>
<p>Hardworking does not always mean they are learning outside the box, so sure being a Val often means playing the game well</p>
<p>When my D was in that same middleschool, a teacher was asking for metaphores in a book, it was clearing water that was being represented, not a tiger as she had been teaching for years…my D wrote water, the ocean, etc., and was told she was wrong…well, I read the book, showed the pages to several friends, some teachers, and they all agreed it was ocean. water, and not tiger.</p>
<p>Well, the Val of the 8th grade put Tiger, because that is what the teacher hinted at in class, though it was clearly wrong, we know because my D asked to see her assignment after she got it back to understand why she was given a C and the Val an A</p>
<p>I went to that teacher, and as politely as I could muster showed that she had been teaching the lesson wrong for oh 25 years, D got half credit…</p>
<p>So Val played the game, did the same in her writing, didn’t stray far from the proven path. and you know when she got to HS, she was suddenly a C student because she had know imagination and couldn’t much think on her own…ahhhh</p>
<p>H was val of his class, a public magnet school in Chicago that was very strong academically. H also says that another student should have been val because the student was smarter than H and should have gotten higher grades, but the teachers didn’t like the other student and gave that student low grades for questioning authority.</p>
<p>H is smart, but not a risk taker. He has a remarkable ability to rise above troubled waters without getting splashed.</p>
<p>I think some Vals are absolutely brilliant, some mainly hard workers and others toadies. One thing my D complained about was that English/History teachers gave consistently high grades to everyone, even in AP classes, so that her extreme talent in these areas did not really help her class rank. She did, however, get 790 on the writing SAT so she had another way of showing what she could do. (Her GPA was fine.) Sometimes H.S. teachers are not the brighrest bulbs on the block; sometimes they are.</p>
<p>My heart goes out to the suicidal Val. What a lot of pressure! My best friend married the Val from the class before us. Although he attended Wesleyan, earned an MA in math and is teaching at a small, not pretigious college, he feels he failed his potential. I think it’s a gift to not be a Val. </p>
<p>About advantages of being a Val: some schools care more than others. For example: Dartmouth seems to really care; Brown doesn’t, an so on.</p>
<p>I think it is too easy for a college to just pick the Vals of a HS without looknig at other worthy students who may not have that award</p>
<p>It like, oh she’s a Val grab her, while the school could be missing out on someone who could really add to the school who didn’t get that award</p>
<p>And when you have a school with 40 Vals, the whole process is suspect, no matter who swell the kids</p>
<p>The schools that I see that give vals a big tip factor are in state public schools. That makes sense to me because presumably a student who knows how to get the #1 slot by reaching the school’s standards (which have a great deal to do with state standards) is likely to be able to excel in a college environment that also is set by state standards.</p>
<p>Since public colleges are basically supervised by the taxpayers of their state, they will want admission standards that seem unbiased. Consequently, giving preference to vals would seem reasonable. Selecting students on potential, creativity, etc. could seem suspect to being influenced by bias.</p>
<p>The top private schools are far less likely to take students just because they are vals. That’s why we see so many people complaining on CC about not getting into Ivies even though some students who ranked a few slots lower were accepted.</p>
<p>It is difficult to define intelligence. Everyone functions differently. Of course we have some definitions, etc, but they are a little stringent for my tastes because you’d honestly find that half the people who are written off are pretty good at something. And a lot of “super bright kids” just happen to be from middle class homes with two educated parents, I do find THAT to be rather interesting (yeah, there are exceptions, but go look in a gifted program, it’s the way it is). And I’m not bitter or anything because obviously I fit that profile myself, but, that is what it is. </p>
<p>I am sure this girl is very “smart” (by traditional definitions). She was smart enough to do what she had to. It is difficult to get the top grades in several ways and I don’t think it’s fair to write people off as “a bore who just studies”. In my experience, you also need people skills to earn top grades. You need time management skills. You need to have insight that is above average for most of these classes including seminar type activities. You must be able to do well in a variety of settings and work well with a variety of material, which shows ability in overcoming and addressing weaknesses and prioritizing. </p>
<p>I don’t really think it’s accurate to have all these predominant labels and say most with good grades just worked hard, and everyone who doesn’t, is super bright but just not motivated. Either way everyone has a lot of talents. I am sure it wasn’t meant this way but frankly calling someone out for not being very smart and just getting good grades seems a little presumptuous and smacks of some sort of jealousy or something. Like I said I know you didn’t mean it that way but I am just saying. When I hear things like that from people I have a poor impression of them and the conversation makes me feel uncomfortable, as if they are judging everyone’s intelligence on some sort of master scale. And yes I have heard these conversations, in the IB classes and at governor’s school, etc. I do not really know what to say because the concept seems somewhat ridiculous to me. Who cares if they will be a C student later? No really…I just don’t even get it at all. Does it make someone else feel better? They still got the highest grades at that point, even if they’re somehow stupid through that. It is what it is…I have never even thought of it really. We don’t have a Val at all but we know roughly who gets the highest grades more or less, I mean those things are pretty obvious. I think those people are quite intelligent for what it’s worth and all have their own strengths and weaknesses and work hard to accentuate positives and eliminate negatives. I predict all will be successful in what path they choose to take.</p>
<p>I will agree that being valedictorian is often more a matter of hard work and conscientious compliance than innate brilliance.</p>
<p>But what’s wrong with that? These are qualities that will serve the student well in the real world.</p>
<p>There’s nothing wrong with being a hard worker who knows how to follow the rules. I agree that many people like that go very far. They’re not likely to be the innovators of society, but I don’t think they’re as likely as the creative risk takers to become drop-outs or similar things either.</p>
<p>Often the hard worker goes farther in the world than the innately brilliant.</p>
<p>Innate brilliance is not nearly enough to be truly successful.</p>
<p>fairly mean spirited remark IMHO. Like my mom told be, “If you cannot say something good about a person, don’t say it.”</p>
<p>I was thinking about the valedictorian issue this morning. I do not think that becoming valedictorian is about being the smartest, it is about dedication and motivation in an organization. Several people in my family are quite bright, but they did not become valedictorians. However, some of these people have gone on to start their own businesses - success outside of organizations. </p>
<p>I think there are some common denominators for the kids that are likely to be valedictorian at my school: their parents are interested in them, they hang out with the academically motivated crowd, they aren’t overly spoiled, they rarely are absent, they’ve all had encouragement from teachers to succeed since grade school, they’ve all been good test takers and are in the GATE program, and they generally enjoy reading. </p>
<p>It will be interesting to see who ends up being valedictorian.</p>
<p>I really think it would be more inspiring if, from a pool of sals, we students would be able to choose the valedictorian to give the address. I got the impression that something like that was done at Harvard Law in Legally Blonde. That way, those kids who play games to maximize their GPAs wouldn’t, by default, receive the honor.</p>
<p>I agree with post #12 and with the first paragraph of post 15. </p>
<p>Be careful of some of the generalizations written here, which includes many anecdotes and the confusion of inclusion vs. exclusion.</p>
<p>A Val can have one, two, or three of the following:
intelligence
work ethic
intellectualism</p>
<p>Great colleges and U’s want all three in one student, if possible. It is those triply proven Vals that tend to be the accepted Vals, at the most selective & most admissions-competitive U’s.</p>
<p>The HS D graduated from doesn’t rank (because its statewide competitive admissions). The valedictorian is the kid who gives the best speech in tryouts for it. It was far and away the best graduation speech I’ve ever heard.</p>
<p>The neighborhood HS ended up with a dozen or so vals. I hope they didn’t all speak!</p>
<p>I’m glad my HS didn’t have a val, or even let us know our class rank- my gift dictionary with the inscription to the – HS val… was my biggest clue. Here our local school district does not have vals, etc., although they do have class rank in the transcript. Since they do not weight grades (like the state U’s- makes it easier when applying) I would never attach being the smartest or achieving the most academically to a 4.0- all it would take is one B (no +'s or -'s given either) to drop in the ranks; whereas one could always have a study hall and never take an honors or AP class and be a “top” student (I once asked about how things work when I saw the name of a probably still special ed student listed on the high honor roll… I found out this sort of student would not inappropriately keep a regular student from achievements/awards- therefore it is nice the special ed kids can see their hard work recognized in the newspaper). The speech givers are not known as vals, that is a separate distinction, where given.</p>
<p>As a parent I have learned that high grades and intelligence or amount known (can’t say learned because may have started a class already knowing most of the material, etc.) don’t always correlate. One reason to keep the standardized tests, including ACT/SAT and AP exams. The students often know who is the smartest, they would be surprised at learning some gpa’s. The recent grad just learned something important about learning and knowledge- it is a lot more than just a HS gpa. A truly “appropriate” education for the gifted does not exist in the real world of HS education, fortunately many/most survive it able to later make use of their abilities (I had to add this GT statement since I can understand why these kids don’t conform and perform; another whole topic).</p>