<p>Pizzagirl, in a lot of schools everybody knows everything about other kids’ grades. To suggest that the OP was “prying” may be very unfair.</p>
<p>At our school every year the top two or three kids in the running for val and sal all have straight A’s AND tons of weighted classes. Any kid who gets even one B (much less a kid with many Bs) is almost certainly out of the running for val and may not make sal either. A kid with many Bs may well get into plenty of good colleges and be a great success in life but will have no hope of being valedictorian.</p>
<p>One reason some schools have stopped ranking is that they had multiple students with perfect grades.</p>
<p>Many, many thanks to all you posters. CC came through again with great advice. Olymom, in particular - words I will live by. I am now at peace…</p>
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<p>As well as students that would take classes below their interest or ability for GPA, and frustrated parents.</p>
<p>OP, glad you turned to CC and got advise that spoke to you. I have found great comfort here at times and been talked off of many a ledge. 
I agree Olymom gave great advise!</p>
<p>(emilybee had me on restriction for quite some time for a matter I won’t even discuss here…humph!)</p>
<p>“fingers crossed she gets a B”?</p>
<p>Sheesh, is it any wonder our planet is in the shape it’s in? The OPs’ “win at any cost” philosophy is the way of the world today, great way to raise a kid.</p>
<p>@ stage4 - Give the OP a break…they just said they would take the responses to heart. We all write things when we are upset. If we don’t write them, a lot of us think them at times. CC is a great place to think out loud before you act…say by approaching the school.</p>
<p>BI, you needed it, dear. ;)</p>
<p>^ True… but I can still tease. ;)</p>
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<p>It’s less the actual “knowing” than it is the attitude. In a lot of schools, is it commonplace for people to remark, in a scornful fashion, on the class choices of students not-their-own? </p>
<p>I think sailing above it all is a far more peaceful strategy, when in the final analysis other students’ performance really isn’t your concern anyway. Noblesse oblige and all. “How lovely for dear Broomhilda that she’s doing so well, yawn” is FAR more subtly effective than “and BESIDES! Broomhilda isn’t such a hot history student, is she? Huh? And she’s not an NMSF! AND, she dropped out of harder AP classes!”</p>
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<p>Well, we don’t have a lot of perfect A kids, but the val almost always is one. At the end of each school year among the 800 or so 9th graders there are approximately 10 straight-A kids. One by one they get a B or two and drop out of contention along the way. By val/sal choosing time there is usually only one or two left, maybe three in big year. </p>
<p>Between that and weighting it’s very unusual for two kids to be exactly tied for GPA. It happened for the first time in recent school memory in 2009, and they simply declared co-vals.</p>
<p>emilybee and blueiguana- you stop it right now or will come in and separate you two.</p>
<p>“Broomhilda”, love it.</p>
<p>OP - It seems that the Val/Sal issue comes up every year. There seems to be a limitless number of ways to disadvantage to one student or another. Just a couple from my recollection:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>The student who faked an injury so he could take a (weighted) course at a local community college … instead of the required, unweighted Physical Education class.</p></li>
<li><p>The student who sued the school system (mentioned in a prior post)</p></li>
<li><p>The student who was denied Val because she took Algebra 1 in 8th Grade in a different school system. (The HS required that all courses required for graduation be taken at the HS in order to qualify to be Val … or Sal.)</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Fortunately, in the grander scheme none of this really matters. Your S will be fine, regardless of how this turns out. Congrats on raising a great kid.</p>
<p>I think you know way too much about this other kid, but maybe your school is different from ours. I knew nothing about how many B’s someone else’s student got or what courses they took. And while some APs may be easier than others, it’s also true that my older son took mostly science APs which were easy FOR HIM, while others may have taken a more rounded schedule. This sort of thing happens all the time. My sister-in-law at some point told us she didn’t get to be val because she took orchestra in addition to a full schedule and because orchestra wasn’t weighted her GPA ended up being lower than the kid who didn’t take orchestra. In our school honors are weighted the same as APs, is that fair? Some schools don’t weight courses at all. After reading many, many posts on CC about the advantages and disadvantages of all the different ranking systems I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no best way to do it. Students are best off taking the most demanding curriculum they feel comfortable with, and then seeing where the cards fall. </p>
<p>If you think the system needs changing, you could go in and say “I am not asking you to change your rules for this year, but this seems to me to be a problem and this is why” and then lay out your logic. But warning - saying one AP is easier than another, is not going to be a good enough reason.</p>
<p>OP, I’m glad you are not going to fight this battle. </p>
<p>My daughter was val last year and I’m not going to lie, I was thrilled and extremely proud of her. But now she is a freshman in college and the fact that she was the val does not matter AT ALL anymore. She’s just another smart kid in a sea of smart kids (and other valedictorians). </p>
<p>By the way, I don’t think the very most selective colleges care much if at all about the valedictorian title. It seems like it could be of some value at less selective colleges that like to say that “X percentage of our students were valedictorians of their high schools.” The kid from my D’s school who got into Harvard was not the val or sal, did not have the hardest courseload, did not take all APs, but she is a great girl who had lots of interesting ECs and a personality that wowed the interviewer.</p>
<p>^^When I was in HS there were students who revealed their grades to each other and we also had an honor roll which listed everyone on it by descending order of gpa. It was competitive. At my son’s school, I don’t think the NM Commended kids even compared scores. I still don’t know who is NMSF there. It hasn’t been discussed as far as I know, nor has any formal announcement been made. Not sure if it’s the nature of the schools or the times that there is less “prying”.</p>
<p>I had a similar concern when my son was considering a school that gave a scholarship to the vals that attended. But he is not planning on applyong to that school now, so it is a non-issue.</p>
<p>At my kids’ former school there were many seniors with only A’s and at least a handful with only A+s… PE is an unweighted class (though there were A+s given out) and if one delayed junior PE until senior year that upped a GPA. Band is an unweighted class. You couldn’t recover from band if your goal was to be # 1. At least a dozen students took college classes during the summer and during the school year. (Summer classes didn’t count towards rank but did appear on transcript. ) Some took them at the local ivy. An ivy A was weighted the same as an AP A so the AP A+ gives more points even if the ivy A is in a course cross listed for seniors and grad students. Some ivy profs don’t give “+” </p>
<p>Heaven help the group of kids who passed mono around one year! Being valedictorian for their classes had a lot to do with who you happened to be dating - or not dating- one term.</p>
<p>I say make the only award be an attendance award! :)</p>
<p>One year there were a bunch of commended students who were announced and honored. They forgot to announce the one NMSF. We said “big deal- no worries - no one needs this info” ;)</p>
<p>personally I think it is sometimes more comfortable and easier to fly under the radar…</p>
<p>at my kids’ school they made psat scores public information to anyone and everyone until I protested</p>