Maybe others have mentioned this, but the awarding of official valedictorian status is often not done until after college applications have long since been submitted. Of course, ranking at the end of the sixth or seventh high school semester can be entered on an application, but that it not “valedictorian” at most schools in my area. As the parent of an accomplished regional/state/national fine arts student who was also valedictorian, the top schools seemed just as interested in his musical accomplishments as they did in his class ranking. Some universities offer scholarships to valedictorians, but in our case, far more schools offered merit aid based on the total academic package than on valedictorian status. Those academic scholarships were much more substantial than the valedictorian only awards. Actually, most financial aid packages were awarded before the official valedictorian designation was made. After my son’s first year of college, he promptly removed valedictorian from his resume because no one cared. On a side note - the valedictorian of his high school, one year later, was not accepted to any of the Ivy League schools despite having won numerous academic awards and completing research in conjunction with a professor at a prestigious university (also NMF and Intel Semi-Finalist). The salutatorian, with a perfect ACT score and National Merit Finalist status was also not accepted to an Ivy. There’s so much more to a college application and resume than class rank, in my opinion. I love to see kids take advantage of all the academics available to them while also pursuing their passions in music, athletics or whatever else interests them.