<p>“Is the narrow difference between GPAs a result of grade inflation?”</p>
<p>I don’t know what part is due to grade inflation. But two years ago ninety-percent of my D’s class had A averages … which in her school system was 93 or better. I’m one of those dinosaurs who went through school when 10% got A’s and 15% got B’s … when a B+ average overall was considered pretty darned good.</p>
<p>Well, if grading followed a bell curve, grades would at least be more spread out, and the majority of students would not be clustered in a 10 point or less range. It makes sense that lenient standards have created a problem that in past years was less common. Grade inflation also does not allow for much differentiation between the exceptional students and everyone else, so it is less likely that the brightest student is actually recognized.</p>
<p>I am still thinking about the HS with 44 valedictorians! Can you imagine if they all wanted to say a few things?</p>
<p>Our HS had 14 Vals, all 4.0s, mostly due to extra credit for tests and projects. They all take a different task (leading the pledge of allegiance, introducing different sections, leading the singing of the school song) with only one being the Val speaker (or two if they are doing a Huntley/Brinkley).</p>
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This had to be weighted. If our high school had every 4.0+w designated as a valedictorian we would have had over 100. It’s a large school (about 3,000 kids last year). This is what we designate at Summa Cum Laude graduates and they are recognized on another night at a county ceremony. I prefer one valedictorian or no formal ranking at all…but then no one asked me.</p>
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<p>Wow, at a school like that if you WEREN’T valedictorian you better clean up your act.</p>
<p>Seems like being that loose with the selection criteria kinda dilutes the value of the honor down to the level of meaninglessness.</p>
<p>He should decide what is important to him and if being valedictorian is what he wants and feels he deserves then he should be advocating for himself. Let him fight the battle and support from the sidelines.</p>
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<p>One of the questions on counselor’s Common App form is “how many students share this ranking” – specifically so the top colleges can discount high schools which overdo the honors.</p>
<p>Really, it’s also kind of silly when one A- in freshman typing class puts a student out of the running. Maybe only academic classes should get counted, and weight given to classes of greater rigor.</p>
<p>It seems as if every high school has its own unique way of deciding who will be the valedictorian(s). Ours has the senior with the highest GPA give a speech at graduation, but we don’t call that person the valedictorian - I imagine in an attempt to defuse some of the parental angst surrounding the issue.</p>
<p>siliconvalleymom’s suggestion of counting only academic subjects makes sense to me. But weighting for greater rigor is subject to many distinctions and arguments - I don’t blame hs administrators who’d rather not get into all that. If the unweighted GPA is what counts, we might have fewer kids (and their parents) designing courseloads based solely on rigor; maybe the top-performing kids actually could take art or orchestra because they like those subjects, instead of yet another AP in order to boost the GPA another tenth of a point. </p>
<p>It all reminds me of Budy Hackett’s line in “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,” when the cast can’t agree on a way to split the loot: “Look! We figured it seventeen different ways, and every time we figured it, it was no good, because no matter how we figured it, somebody don’t like the way we figured it!”</p>
<p>Valedictorian is of an old system where every student takes the same courses. When there are many APs to choose from and college courses available, weighting can mess up things, badly. </p>
<p>Hypothetically, if APs worth 4.5 while college courses worth 4.0 and a student can take the latter from an Ivy or a nearby CC, then the straight-A student with the toughest APs (e.g., English Lit, CalBC, and Physics C) and many Ivy courses could rank out of the top 10 for a large HS. Such a HS just might exist on the East Coast.</p>
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<p>Did he take a gap year?</p>
<p>OP - Hopefully you are now past the frustration, moving on. The rest of my post is mostly for parents with younger students. </p>
<p>There really is no totally fair way to do ranking. In my day, we did not even have the concept of weighted grades. Sometimes the Val was a business student taking few honors classes. Weighting makes things more fair, but there is no perfect system. Does it make sense that an IB/AP student taking study hall has a higher GPA than IB/AP classmate filling the block with unweighted music elective? No… but tis one of the quirks of weighting. So be it. </p>
<p>My son never attempted to “play the game” of maximizing weighted class potential. His many unweighted music electives (10 semesters) kept him far from the top, despite very few Bs. Another kid was in similar situation - he ended up at the Ivy of his choice, with some impressive other honors too. This is my pitch to let your kid do what he/she loves… even if it means sacrificing class rank.</p>
<p>Other than the val and sal, my NYC urban public magnet high school doesn’t rank. Also, because our grades are based on a scale of 100…being tied was never an issue. However, sometimes the difference between the val and sal could be ten-thousanth of a point or less. </p>
<p>More importantly, no one really made a big deal of it as I can recall. Heck, the only reason why I still remember the name of my graduating class’ sal was because he’s a friend. Part of the latter was because he didn’t take the competition of val/sal so seriously…and it showed even on the resume he showed me/sent out where he left out his sal status and only mentioned that our high school doesn’t rank. </p>
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<p>At high schools with cutthroat levels of competition like the NYC urban public magnet I attended, certainly. Worse, some teachers would join by publicly noting only those who were performing at the top 1/3 or top 1/10th of the class or conversely…constantly berating those near the bottom*. What do you expect when it was a common pastime of some popular(the best students) kids to call anyone with scores below 1350 or even 1400/1600 on the pre-1995 SATs “■■■■■■■”…and where being silent about one’s scores was presumed to be “hiding” one’s “■■■■■■-level performance”. </p>
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<li>Got plenty of experience here…especially from a particularly sadistic teacher who took great joy in reminding me daily how I’d never last a semester in college judging by my performance in his class. He also didn’t appreciate it later when as an alum, I was able to prove how wrong he was about my college performance.</li>
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<p>Well, that’s how UC and CSU calculate high school GPA for their admissions (they don’t count +/-, they count only 10th and 11th grade academic subject grades, they give +1 to up to 8 semesters of honors/AP/college courses with C or higher grades, and they do not consider current class rank or the high school’s method of GPA calculation).</p>
<p>I can see class rank being crucial in Texas, where the state universities consider rank in class, not high school GPA, for freshman admission. But the important rank location is not #1 vs. #2 (unless there were very few students in the class or something like that), but the borderline of the top 9% or 10% or whatever threshold the desired state university in Texas is using.</p>
<p>Our kid was THE MIDDLE of his HS in rank with a 3.5 or so, unweighted, 14 AP credits, 1 college course & a NMF status. He entered his competitive private U with the maximum 60 credits a very generous merit award that was renewable & did great in his chosen undergrad & got 3 excellent job offers IN HIS FIELD by Feb 2010 of SR year. It has never particularly hurt him that he was only barely in the top 1/2 of his HS class. His employer has offered to pay for him to go to grad school and also has a program to help repay educational loans.</p>
<p>I’d suggest not agonizing over things and let the student decide how much (or little) importance to place on fighting this battle. Personally, it seems pretty arbitrary how the HS decided to resolve this, but not sure it’s worth much agonizing.</p>
<p>HImom - that is the MIDDLE of the class??!! Those kids deserve a medal of valor for surviving. What stress!</p>
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<p>Then such a school isn’t worth attending, no matter how good it is - and that being good academically doesn’t equate to being a decent human being. That’s insane.</p>
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<p>Unless the alternatives are worse.</p>
<p>Fair point, Marian.</p>