<p>OP smells ■■■■■-y to me, too. </p>
<p>Fwiw we have had good experiences with Val/sal and general top kid relationships. No sabotage. Humility on the part of top kids. More working together than working against one another. Same was true when I was growing up. It doesn’t have to be cut throat.</p>
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<p>It seems I forgot to mention that I lived this experience firsthand during my stint at one of the better NYC public junior high schools* where the bullying of above-average academic achievers was already bad enough with ganging-on assaults using fists and kicks. Some of my friends who attended other city junior high schools were threatened with knives or sometimes even guns. </p>
<p>An older neighbor who attended my neighborhood’s zoned high school was knifed and sustained wounds requiring multiple stitches some weeks after starting 9th grade while I was in 6th grade. A reason why he pleaded with younger kids like myself and our parents to do whatever we can to avoid going there as the violent crime there was out of control at the time. </p>
<p>That was a factor for my applying and attending a SHS rather than my old neighborhood HS. On a recent discussion on my HS’s alum forum, the topic of being bullied and even subjected to physical violence during our elementary and middle-school years for being above-average academically in those environments is a popular topic of discussion. Those discussions includes alums younger than myself so while there may have been some improvements in the NYC public school system, it seems they still have a long way to go in many areas…especially some neighborhoods which were notorious for this issue back when I was in K-12. </p>
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<li>A.K.A.: Middle school.</li>
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<p>Actually, it is blaming the victim as the reasoning’s very similar to one the bikers involved in the recent NYC attack used to justify attacking the SUV driver. </p>
<p>In both cases, even assuming the victim was actually guilty of the supposed “wrongs”, it is absolutely no justification for “taking the val down by a peg” in this manner if as alleged or for the bikers to attack the SUV and violently assault the SUV driver to the point a witness thought he was dead.</p>
<p>“First of all, this should have been witnessed by several people near you if it’s true. And secondly, you said earlier that you didn’t even get an A. So, it should be easy to tell whether you copied from the other scantron–did you get the same questions wrong, and did you mark the <em>same</em> wrong answers to them? This should be quite obvious. If you are innocent, it should be easy to clear your name.”</p>
<p>This is sort of what I was thinking. A simple thorough investigation should pretty readily turn up the truth of the matter. Just as long as the school actually DOES the investigation. That’s why I suggested OP immediately get his/her parents involved.</p>
<p>One way to investigate this is to compare the scantron answers of the OP and the person who he was accused of copying from. If there was more than a 95% match in answers on both scantrons and the wrong answers were identical then it is likely cheating occurred.</p>
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<p>You lived your own experience first-hand, cobrat? That’s so novel. Did it not occur to you that the rest of us lived our experiences first-hand too? </p>
<p>And don’t even kid yourself - you were in a bad, violent neighborhood, but let’s not kid ourselves that the delinquents who attacked young students do so because they’re jealous of their academic status. They are hoodlums, and hoodlums attack anyone they can.</p>
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<p>Hate to break it to ya, but bullying of above-average academic achievers isn’t strictly an inner-city, hoodlum, or a violent neighborhood problem. </p>
<p>Recent news stories and accounts from far too many folks I’ve known from different SES level communities…including rural communities and upper-middle class suburbs show it’s a nationwide problem. </p>
<p>In fact, it’s so well known there’s even a pop-culture references such as the Revenge of the Nerds series. :)</p>
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<p>Your anecdata is no stronger than anyone else’s anecdata. No matter how many cousins, friends, classmates, professors, etc. you cite in your attempts to make it seem as though your contacts are the authority on everything under the sun. </p>
<p>Did you talk to EVERYONE at Oberlin to see whether they or other high-achievers got bullied? How do you account for the many, many high-achievers who may not have been homecoming queens or big men on campus but never were actively bullied for their academic achievement?</p>
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<p>One didn’t have to try very hard to get such accounts as discussions of how one was bullied for being an above-average academic achiever or otherwise being different was a common conversation topic among Oberlin students. </p>
<p>Similarly, encountering such bullying in public/private elementary/middle schools in NYC also seems to be a common conversation topic among alums from my and other urban public magnet high schools…and they comprise both older alums going back decades and younger alums. </p>
<p>One thing we don’t have too much of are Queen Bee types who badger those who recount or discuss the experiences of others.</p>
<p>Is there a conversation topic among “alums from your high school” that ISN"T common? Because it seems that you have discussed practically every topic ever covered on College Confidential with them. </p>
<p>You do nothing BUT recount the experiences of others. There’s not a topic on CC where you haven’t allegedly had some cousin, friend or fellow alum from your high school who has told you far more about the topic than anyone else here could ever possibly know.</p>
<p>Don’t you get that it’s unusual to fixate so much on your high school experiences? That most grown adults DON’T go on and on about what their fellow high school classmates did, saw, or thought? It gets old, cobrat. Very old.</p>
<p>Many if not most bully/ abuse victims feel shame and don’t talk about it. It’s unusual for it to be the topic of conversation.</p>
<p>OP- You posted this in another thread: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/16464891-post45.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/16464891-post45.html</a> Your SAT is a 1690 and you’re #1 in your class?? Really??</p>
<p>And I repeat, but I go back to this, quoting the OP from post 1:
“I clearly did not cheat…”</p>
<p>If it is so clear the student did not cheat, then why the big worry? This should be resolved in 5 seconds, if innocence is so clear.</p>
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<p>Okay, but you can only know so many people. Your acquaintances could only comprise a very very small sample. I really don’t see how you can decide that this is a problem on a national scale based on the discussions you’ve had with some friends, relatives, and coworkers.</p>
<p>As for news articles, sure, there are lots about bullying in general. But bullying specifically targeting vals/sals? There is really enough data to decide that this is a phenomenon of a national level? That those at the top are constantly bombarded with accusations of academic dishonesty or targeted in other ways purely based on the fact that they are smart and accomplished?</p>
<p>One more thing to add, Nrds to your skeptical paragraph(post 93), not only are vals/sals specifically targeted by bullies, but targeted because of their academic excellence.</p>
<p>How many of the students who are less academically inclined and who might “bully” or assault other students even know who or what a val/sal is?? Or care?</p>
<p>As OP said, in his school it’s publicly announced. In some schools, this type of announcements may come with a monetary reward. In some schools, it may paint a target on the back of the students. I’m glad so many of you attended schools where things went well (it was my experience too) but it’s not as common as you seem to think.
UCBAlumnus posted a link to a study about this phenomenom, I can’t find it now but if you’re interested it exists.
Jym26, not sure what school you’re attending but in many schools 1690 is considered a respectable score.
OP is #1 (highest unweighted GPA) but isn’t val/sal (highest weighted rank).</p>
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<p>That is why I posted that one had to wonder about the type of school the OP attends. Unfortunately, that type of “statistics” is hardly unusual. While I can’t claim the univeral knowledge via a CCCCC anecdote, I am well aware that plenty of schools in Texas and especially California exhibit the patterns of having high GPAs, offering AP and especially the watered down IB program, all the while barely crossing a 1500 on a 2400 score on the SAT. </p>
<p>Fwiw, someone interested in those patterns could do worse than analyzing the yearly College Board reports and “match” the self-reported GPA to the SAT scores. If one really WANTS to believe that those scores are truthfully reported (I happen to believe the reported GPA and income levels are whimsical at best) the overwhelming majority of SAT testers score well above a B+ average. No gentlemen C here – almost noboby fails a course on the shores of USA Wobegon! It is no longer a lake; it stretches from Portland, Maine to San Diego, CA! </p>
<p>But heck, our high personal esteem is still intact! And the best way to survive our mediocre public system of education is to pretend it does not exist or does not matter.</p>
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Not for #1 ranking student.</p>
<p>MYO,
Last year, a 1690 was (average male/female) 70th percentile <a href=“http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/SAT-Percentile-Ranks-Composite-CR-M-W-2012.pdf[/url]”>http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/SAT-Percentile-Ranks-Composite-CR-M-W-2012.pdf</a> It may be “respectable” but its average, and surprising for a #1 student.</p>
<p>** crossposted with oldfort.</p>
<p>At a school that doesn’t weight grades, it is perfectly possible for a val to have mediocre-at- best SATs. Not common, but possible. I would cite the example of the girl who was declared Val at our HS years ago who had never taken a single honors or AP course. I have no idea what her SATs were, but something like a 1690 seems quite likely.</p>
<p>But I remain skeptical of the OP.</p>