Becoming valedictorian certainly didn’t mean I couldn’t follow my passions. I was a serious classical pianist. I practiced up to five hours a day the summer before my senior year and nearly that much after school started. I was allowed to skip first period every day so that I could practice. I almost majored in piano performance in college, but I knew I wasn’t good enough to be a solo pianist with an orchestra, so I went with engineering.
I guess I’m shallow, but I’m still proud I was valedictorian. One of my best friends was salutatorian, and we delivered our graduation speech together. I was going to UT and my friend was going to A&M, so we had fun with that (the schools are fierce rivals).
@MaineLonghorn - So let me get this straight. Two people from the same high school in Maine, one the valedictorian and the other the salutatorian and they go to UT and A&M, respectively? That has to be a first.
Oh, I grew up in Austin, Texas. Went to the same high school that Drew Brees did - Westlake.
The month I finished grad school, oil prices plummeted and the job offer I’d gotten was rescinded because the economy tanked. So DH and I sent out almost 300 resumes all over the country and were lucky enough to end up in Maine.
D14 was Sal. She never, and I mean never competed for it. She took the classes she wanted to take and earned the grades she did because that’s how she works. They happened to mesh well with the Val/Sal calculation her particular HS used. She also had fun in high school, and took four years of orchestra and three years of art, and every AP class she could, because she wanted the challenge. However, she didn’t want an A hour class her senior year and refused to take that one class that would have made her co-val instead of sal. She is on track to finish a BS/MS coterminal degree in engineering in 4.5 years (would have been four but she recently changed the MS and it added a semester), has done one summer internship with a nonprofit and is set up for her third engineering internship this summer. She also regularly attends the opera. It’s too early to say whether she will change the world, but she might change her corner of it. The val of her class is studying engineering as well. For D, the most significant thing about being sal was the speech. She is NOT a public speaker. Writing and delivering a speech in front of thousands of people (big HS) was a huge challenge. It was a huge challenge met and overcome. It was one more thing she discovered she was capable of doing well. One last lesson learned in high school.
D16 is still dating the val of her high school class, so we know him well. She was prom queen, he was val. We took some very funny pictures of them in their respective garb, pretending to pick each other’s noses. Neither expected anyone to care about those titles even one day past graduation, if that long. They are both great friends with the sal as well. Both val and sal (and my D, who still hasn’t figured out how she ended up prom queen) are doing great in college.
There was a thread a year or more ago about how schools choose val and sal. It varies a lot. It takes some luck (no terrible teachers, no illness, etc) and hard work to achieve, generally. It helps to have strong family support. It’s a nice honor.
All these kids I’ve known are smart, funny, hard-working, creative, responsible, caring, and not the overly competitive stereotypes. Any of them are potential world-changers, but so are many of their non-top-ranked classmates.
S19 won’t be val or sal but wants to be a music teacher. Maybe one of the vals or sals will change the world, or maybe it will be him…
Being the valedictorian or salutatorian is not as big a deal as it used to be, but I would hardly stereotype them as rule followers. Many of the students getting into tippy top schools seem to come from that 3-10 range behind the top 2, most likely due to there interests outside academics.
@MaineLonghorn - I understand. I’m an Aggie (grad school) and worked in the oil industry until 1998, when prices dropped below $20/bbl. So we ended up in Virginia. It’s a very financially rewarding industry when times are good, but I didn’t want to deal with the ups and downs.
My H would have been val, except that he got into a dispute with his chem teacher who gave him a 0 on a class assignment he missed because of a band obligation, which then lowered a marking period grade enough to knock him down to sal. It would have meant nothing to him, but he lost the 1700 dollar difference in scholarships between no. 1 and 2. He actually tried (maybe the only time in is life) to follow the rules, cuz he really needed the money for college, but she wouldn’t back down.
The rest of us were top five but not val or sal material. The val of my class suffered a horrendous accident as a young adult, and is now a prominent disability rights activist. I am proud to have been beat by him.
My high school didn’t believe in ranks or valedictorians. I actually have no idea who had the highest grades. I don’t think it was me, but I was one of the top students. Out of a class of 80 - 6 went to Harvard, 4 to Yale and 2 to Princeton. One of those people writes for the New York Times, none of the rest of us have any name recognition at all.
I’m Val of a class of 397, and I’m giving my speech at my graduation next week. I wouldn’t say that I’m a rule follower or breaker, really. I don’t go out of my way to do either but instead just do what I want. When you get to the status of valedictorian, you can get away with more stuff.
To get to the status of Val there is obviously a lot of gaming and scheming. Sure, I worked really hard and got perfect grades, but I took certain classes pass-fail or online so that they factored differently into my GPA. I would say that this also contradicts the point that we are all squares. Really, it’s nearly impossible to become a Val in a large public high school by sticking to all the rules and plans that the average student follows.
As with everything, we can’t paint with a broad brush. Some get to be val by taking the classes that interest them and without any gaming and scheming. There will be some who change the world, and some who settle into ordinary lives. The same could be said for non-vals.
@JemmaSimmons what do you mean by “large” public high school? For some, large means a graduating class of 400, while to others large means well over a thousand.
Both DS and DD were vals in our large public school. They were competitive about it because of the financial consideration - they understood our state grants both Val and Sal a full tuition scholarship to FlagShip State - which neither of them took, because they got better deals at Columbia and Stanford. I would not call either of them a rule follower because I find that label too dismissive, and not entirely accurate.
They were exceptional students in high school because for them, it wasn’t that hard, and they wanted to apply themselves.
At our local public HS, they did not need to play games or scheme to attain this. They wanted to take the most challenging courses because they knew they would have the chance to learn more. They took 16 and 17 AP exams, respectively, and still found time for lots of meaningful EC’s. Some kids learn very rapidly and can read/write exceptionally well, and quickly. They could crank out a 10 page research paper in a couple hours, and still retain the material they learned.
What they did find was that several of their teachers did not seem to give much constructive feedback too them - getting a paper back with an A+ and maybe a “Great Job” made them wonder if the teachers had thoroughly read their work. They sometimes felt they were graded on reputation.
Their future is of course unknown, but DS is working in a job he loves, and earning enough to support some of the charitable causes he chooses, and still having time to do things he enjoys… DD wrapped up her sophomore year at Stanford, and is home for almost 2 weeks before she will leave to study abroad for the summer.
I consider them successful human beings because they learned to do what makes them happy, and they look out for others less fortunate than they are. It wasn’t the val status that made them that kind of person. They don’t have to change the world on a huge scale, but they still might. Same goes for a lot of their classmates.
The author of this article is also the author of the book that the article refers to at the end, and which was just released on May 16. This book then cites another book written by the researcher: *Lives of Promise: What Becomes of High School Valedictorians: A Fourteen-year Study of Achievement and Life Choices *, Karen Arnold, 1995.
Note that the book was first published in 1995. It was a 14-year study, indicating that the students being studied would have graduated around 1981! I think the landscape has changed significantly since then with respect to class rankings. At D18’s school, you don’t have a chance at Val or Sal unless you take nothing but AP and/or DE courses your final two years along with a full honors curriculum the first two years (with a couple APs thrown in there as well).
I’d argue that a better study would be one that compares a broader range of straight-A students to their sub 4.0UW peers.
@shortnuke “I’d argue that a better study would be one that compares a broader range of straight-A students to their sub 4.0UW peers.”
I once read a study similar to the one you proposed that was IQ-based. I don’t remember all the details, but to put it simply, the results were that a personal generally needs a certain IQ to achieve success in life, but there is a point in which a higher IQ was no longer relevant. In other words, those with the highest IQs - the one percent of the one percent or so - were successful but weren’t any more successful than those in the highest 3 or 5%.
I graduated with about 350 people. I was in the top 10 but not val or sal. The year I graduated, all of the vals in my city’s schools (5) ended up becoming doctors, but so did a lot of other kids. One of the vals committed suicide about a year after she graduated med school. The two most successful kids made Cs and Ds.
At D’s school, I would definitely say the val is likely to be a “schemer” and a rule follower. There are about 700 kids in each class, and the designation comes down to who took that one more AP class. There is at least one kid every year on the verge of a nervous breakdown trying to be the top student by taking classes they have absolutely no interest in taking.
@tutumom2001 I suspect that the students aren’t the schemers. Some parents seem to be more than willing to work the system to push their kid to #1, which I think puts far more pressure on the kids than they would typically put on themselves.
I think Malcom Gladwell referenced the study you mentioned in one of his books (Outliers… or David and Goliath…).
@shortnuke totally agree with you about the parents, but some of D20’s friends are truly shocked that she isn’t taking a more “rigorous” AP schedule. D will graduate with about 8 or so APs that include 3 histories, 2 English, 2 math, and 1 or 2 science; there are kids in her school who seriously have at least twice that many. She has no desire to take “easy” APs just to pad her GPA nor does she like science enough to double up on life and physical sciences every year (she’s also getting pressure from her friends to take both biology and chemistry next year). She likes art. She thinks she might want to be a photographer for the newspaper. She also wants to give debate and drama a whirl. I’m OK with that. I’ve read both Outliers and David and Goliath, so that may very well be where I read about the IQ/success study.
Interestingly, a couple of HS classmates from my year who graduated near the very bottom of our graduating class are practicing MDs from US AMA accredited med schools.
I skimmed the original study. It seemed to look down at doctors, lawyers, and business people, because those professional jobs aren’t “primarily intellectual or creative careers.”
I remember my HS valedictorian only because her name was Val! I think she became a biology professor. My kids’ school stopped ranking after some parents got obsessed with rank to an unhealthy degree. Val was determined in middle school with kids taking advanced classes at the high school. A great deal of calculating went into things like avoiding any unweighted classes that weren’t required, getting special permission to take AP classes in 9th and 10th grade --which generally is not allowed. Rule followers actually didn’t win. There was no reward, anyway. No speech. Just a mention of top 10 students in alphabetical order at graduation. In a class of around 400, there are roughly 40 outstanding students–about the top 10%. There might be 2 or 3 super superstars, but I think these top 40 kids, and many others down to the bottom of the class, can all be successful. They will change their corner of the world for the better. Really, very few people are rich and famous. That most of the vals and sals graduated from college and had professional jobs is great. I don’t see how that isn’t measuring up.
For my high school class, the girl who was first in our class was very nice but I didn’t know her well. Shortly before graduation, a junior (who I did know pretty well as her mother had been my girl scout troop leader for many years) decided to graduate early and she knocked #1 to #2. I’m sure she’s never been to our reunions because no one considers her part of our class.
No one cared. Well, maybe the girl who fell to #2 cared.
For my kids, the guy who was Val seemed nice. He had a few cords around his neck, he won a few awards at the senior awards night. Low key. The girl who was Sal had so much hardware and so many cords and sashes draped around her neck she could barely make it to the stage. To her, it was all very important. The best speech was from the class president. He was quite a character, worked at Brooks Brothers so had the class officers all dressed the same (they were all his friends) and spoke with a humorous, relaxed style. He didn’t go to college, didn’t graduate in the top 20, but he got to sit in the front row. Politician.