<p>I disagree with the concept of multiple valedictorians but at the same time feel that a student achieving a rank of #1 should not imply their superior intelligence and work ethic to their peers, because it usually does not - at least at my school.</p>
<p>Of course it does mean that. The correlation isn’t 100%, but certainly the valdictorian is smarter and harder working than the average student at any school. Just like the average student is smart/harder working than the 10th percentile student.</p>
<p>So a student decides that he/she wants to be val and works his/her bu** off for 4 years. Why does this offend some people? I know students who set a goal such a winning Districts in a track event /all state chorus/going to nationals in debate, etc. These students worked hard and met their goal and everyone is excited for them. </p>
<p>So it’s OK that D worked hard to make Dance team, but not OK that she worked hard to be in the top 10 in her class? I don’t get it.</p>
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<p>My valedictorian is no intellectual and cheated her way through high school. That doesn’t qualify her as “smart,” only more corrupt than others. Copying homework for four years does not make you hard working.</p>
<p>@ksarmand: that is a very unfortunate situation you describe. we can only hope that said val gets his/her comeuppance in college. generally speaking however, most vals are, in fact, the hardest-working students. I think that it’s ridiculous to have multiple #1’s. let the numbers speak for themselves, and give the highest gpa the title. if your school does not weight grades, then there should probably be no rankings at all.
I will say that I’ve grappled internally with the whole concept of ranking; it seems to me that a student for whom a regular class is as challenging as an honors is for another, is thus entitled to the same value for his/her effort.</p>
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The objection isn’t to students who work hard … it is to a system that encourages kids not to take courses that interest them the most or challenge them the most but to take courses that maximize their GPA … a system, in some schools, that leads to students, taking non-AP courses at local colleges or community colleges just ot keep it out of their HS GPA.</p>
<p>It isn’t that way here. The classes are weighted so taking the easier classes doesn’t work. In fact the GPA’s earned by the top 10 each year are virtually impossible to obtain unless a student takes a lot of AP and honors classes. </p>
<p>Senior year D took 4 AP classes, one other academic class (required) and 2 electives. She chose to take the electives knowing that no matter how well she did in those classes those two grades would pull her GPA down because they were non weighted electives. They also both happened to fall at the end of the school day so she could have chosen to drop them and have early release every day. She did not do that. Most of the other students in the top 10 also took non-weighted electives. They were not gaming the system.</p>
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<p>And you know this for a fact? How?</p>
<p>Some of the top students in D’s class were not the ones who were thought of as “smart”.
Many people were surprised at D, perhaps a blonde dancer who likes to joke and rarely talks about studying (just does it) does not fit their definition of an “intellectual”.</p>
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<p>Only the small matter of her confession to me on the last day of school that she stole several of my binders throughout high school to thwart my academic career. Her cheating, beyond the scope of stealing others’ materials, is general knowledge throughout the grade; she has yet to take an honest test in biology without her book open in her lap. And the “copying homework” bit is something I have witnessed personally.</p>
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<p>Well, this is admirable. My val took three classes because senior year grades do not count - and they were all fluff.</p>
<p>OK, so I guess you do know that for a fact. I do think that most vals are not like that.</p>
<p>I note that your location is “Harvard 2014”, why so bitter if you are going to Harvard?</p>
<p>^Oh, I am terribly sorry if I gave off the impression that I was bitter* - I am actually pleased as punch, but just felt that I could not let some of the heavy-handed generalizations I saw in earlier posts slide without contradiction. :)</p>
<p>And I agree with you entirely - most valedictorians are not like that, thank God.</p>
<p>*I am not bitter, but the whole affair has left me quite cynical.</p>
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<p>It was not my intention to diminish your child’s accomplishment, but I suspect the fact that your daughter was her HS’s val, has a lot to do with your feelings regarding the original subject/intent and my response to the thread. The fact is: the Val pursuit has been corrupted and thus its value is lessened.</p>
<p>My D was val this year out of a class of 400 (started with 500 freshman year).</p>
<p>What happened to 20% of the kids?
That is awful. :(</p>
<p>“What happened to 20% of the kids”</p>
<p>It is a large public school which is very diverse. Drop out rates of about 20% are typical for our county. </p>
<p>“The fact is: the Val pursuit has been corrupted and thus its value is lessened.”</p>
<p>I really don’t think that’s the case in our county. Maybe because we have a good number of AP’s (about 10-11) but not enough to fill your schedule so you don’t take EC’s.</p>
<p>Diversity does not explain why so many dropped out- my daughter attended an inner city public school with a much better graduation rate.</p>
<p>Thank the goddess our community would never accept that it was " typical" to have so many children unsupported in that manner.
Their drop out rate, is around 6%.</p>
<p>[College</a> Access Now!](<a href=“http://www.collegeaccessnow.org/]College”>http://www.collegeaccessnow.org/) is just one of the programs in place to help ALL students succeed.</p>
<p>I was surprised when I saw that just 400 graduated when I knew the class was close to 400 as freshmen. Our official dropout rate is 4.19%. But, I’m not sure how those numbers are calculated. Is it per year? That would mean 16-17% for the total of 4 years? There is also a number of kids who need another summer to complete requirements. There is a number of transient hispanic kids who have trouble completing requirements due to frequent relocations. And, we have end of course exams that need to be passed to graduate and sometimes a course needs to be repeated.</p>
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I will note that this has not been my observation–my observation is that the top students don’t find high school work very difficult, and do not have to work that hard to achieve. They have to be willing to do the work, but they often do not have to study for hour upon hour to get good grades.</p>
<p>Our official dropout rate is 4.19%</p>
<p>that sound much better- the class may have some transitional students that entered not ready for high school.</p>
<p>Perhaps the high school should publish the 6 yr grad rates, like the colleges do.
:)</p>
<p>I looked up some stats, graduation rates in our state is 69% and our county 63%. Our HS is considered the best in the county, but still “seems” to have graduation rates of about 75%. Notice how graduation rates differ from the dropout rates. I know that the principal charged my daughter who headed the peer tutoring program for the NHS, to keep dropout rates below a certain percent with a party as a reward. No party, so I guess goals were not reached. </p>
<p>I’m curious to know what other county/school/state graduation rates are. It certainly is a more important statistic than how many vals a school has. Should I start another thread?</p>
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<p>Yup. The valedictorian in my high school was neither the smartest nor the hardest-working kid; he wasn’t even the hardest-working smart kid. He liked to party and really didn’t show much interest in intellectual pursuits at all.</p>
<p>What he had going for him was a real skill–I’m tempted to call it a talent–for taking care of his business; for being aware at any given moment of exactly what he needed to do in every class to keep up and do well, and doing it with zero procrastination or excess complication. He wasn’t a genius, and he wasn’t a world-class worker bee; he was <em>efficient</em>. In my experience, that’s the sine qua non for a straight A student. Of course you have to be smart, and you have to not be lazy. But lots of kids with those qualities don’t have that ability to “just do it” that our val so conspicuously possessed.</p>
<p>“he was <em>efficient</em>. In my experience, that’s the sine qua non for a straight A student.”</p>
<p>Interesting observation. I’ll agree that the vals I know are not usually the most intellectual. Most that I know are able to accomplish a lot with the time they have. I think efficiency of time is an under appreciated skill.</p>