Does this Happen at your school

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

<p>I was looking at our last three graduation years and where the tops of the class went to kind of gauge my chances at different places..and i noticed a weird trend</p>

<p>My freshmen year, our val had a 2150 SAT score and went to notre dame, our sal got a 2300 and went to Pitt on a full ride, and our third got a perfect score and went to Dartmouth</p>

<p>My soph year, 1-6 had 2100 or less SAT scores, while7th got a 2300 and went to CMU</p>

<p>My junior year, our fourth place kid got a perfect score and went to princeton...our val got a 1990 and is going to Penn State</p>

<p>Does this make any sense? It seems like the vals never have the highest SAT or ACT scores...</p>

<p>Oh, and for my grad year our Val got a 2050, our sal has a 2040, and i got a 34 ACT and i'm third...our 17th kid got a 2290...so it seems to be quite a trend</p>

2

<p>In many cases, the val/sal of a class works the hardest but is not necessarily the most intelligent relative to his/her classmates.</p>

3

<p>Dude, the val at my school had a pretty tough time with the SAT as well. I think the best she could do was 1830. I eventually got 2090. However, we are both going to the same college. There is one kid in our graduating class that did like 2310 and made terrible grades this year though. I see the trend</p>

4

<p>Maybe at your school but the last 3 vals for us, the first went to Georgia Tech(Full Ride and OOS), VCU(Accepted into the BS/MD program and full ride to college and MEDICAL school) and this years went to Princeton…</p>

5

<p>I was the Valedictorian and I got 2330, Nobody else at graduation got more than 2200 (a couple with high scores went to Europe though).</p>

6

<p>I’m third or fourth in my class with a 2380… the next highest is like 2050ish. It happens.</p>

7

<p>I just wanted to see if it was an anomoly or a bit of a norm</p>

8

<p>How do you guys know everyone’s SAT scores? I only know the score of one of our former vals, and that’s because the numbers were published in US News. US News did a special on our schools, so thy published a few students’ scores and other info, but only one val.
Both our sals the last two years have gone to school with their twins, who were lower ranked, so they may have opted out of some schools. </p>

<p>'08 vals: CMU, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, and free ride to Emory. Sal goes to Case Western. 3rd in class goes to Harvard
'09 vals: Bowdoin, Loyola in Chicago, Columbia, and Georgetown. Sal: Can’t remember. One of our vals was a twin (with whom I’ve gone to school every year since I was 3) but since she and her sister didn’t go to the same school anyway and her sister went to the Hotchkiss School, she probably didn’t opt out of a higher ranked school to be with her sister.</p>

9

<p>I know SAT scores because some people share them. My school also recently got Naviance so I can see scattergrams (albeit incomplete). Unfortunately it looks like I don’t have access to them anymore. Good thing I took a couple screenshots :smiley: Not sure if I’m allowed to post them.</p>

10

<p>A high class rank doesn’t neccessarily equate to a high SAT score. A lot of our Vals & Sals end up at places like NC State while someone who’s 5th might end up going to Duke.</p>

11

<p>Students take different classes, get different weights, etc. Just because a Val and Sal have a higher GPA than the 3rd, 4th, and 5th doesn’t mean they’re better or smarter than them, just that they ended their high school career with a fraction of a point more than the next person.</p>

12

<p>I’m ranked 80 and I got a 2240… so rank doesn’t exactly correlate to high SAT. However the val got I think around a 2360</p>

13

<p>The '10 class’s likely-to-be valedictorian has a 2340 SAT. His first score was a 2190 though, so he did a bit of practice. &lt;/p>

<p>But for every other class that I know of, the top few people in rank usually don’t have the highest SATs.</p>

14

<p>

</p>

<p>Not necessarily. I had a slightly larger but mostly parallel jump (slightly lower both times) with minimal practice (mostly consisting of helping people on the SAT forum).</p>

15

<p>Me too… I went from 2240 to 2380 with nothing besides a couple brush up sessions out of the bluebook the week before. Everyone should take the test twice.</p>

16

<p>yea, in my school 1-5 got under 2050, I was 8th I got 2090, one of my friends was 17th and got a 2360, another kid wasn’t even top 10% and got a 2360 in one sitting</p>

17

<p>Thanks…
and just to be clear, i realize being highly ranked doesn’t mean having high SAT scores…</p>

<p>i just wanted to see how often this happens</p>

<p>and i disagree with one of the above posters for “everyone should take the test twice”</p>

<p>i took it once, got a 34, and am DONE</p>

18

<p>If you’d taken it again you may have scored 35 or 36. Could help a little, and you have nothing to lose.</p>

19

<p>Or your valedictorian isnt necessarily smart, and is taking easier classes just to get the 4.0. That could happen.</p>

20

<p>Our school’s valedictorian got a 29 on the ACT. I’m at the edge of the 95th percentile and have a 33. I know someone who might be salutatorian or might not, and has a 36. People ranked lower than me have 31, 31 again, and 34.</p>