Does your HS have multiple Valedictorians?

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

<p>I am currently one of 17 valedictorians at my school. My graduating class only has 135 kids, which means that 13% of my class has valedictorian status. I just wanted to know if this happens at a lot of other schools or is this as bizarre as I think it is.</p>

<p>My school does not use a weighted GPA system and all of the Valedictorians have 4.0 unweighted GPAs.</p>

2

<p>WHAT??? That’s crazy. Do I hear grade inflation?</p>

<p>We have 70 people per class, no weighted GPA. We have someone with a 4.0 maybe every five years or so. Last year there were two 4.0s, which never happens, so they were both Vals.</p>

3

<p>Out of 450 kids, my D’s graduating class will have 19 - she has a 3.98 (1 B), and is ranked 20th in her class. This is unweighted, but from what I understand, you have to have a certain number of IB classes too.</p>

4

<p>This doesn’t make sense- a valedictorian is supposed to be the top .Sounds like a way to give more kids a chance to be the top, but how can there be 17 people that are equally ranked ?</p>

5

<p>My school has enough high performing students (and a weighted GPA system), so we use levels of recognition similar to what colleges use.</p>

<p>For students with a 4.6 GPA or higher, they receive summa cum laude recognition.</p>

<p>4.3 to 4.59 GPA is magna cum laude.</p>

<p>And 4.0 to 4.29 is cum laude.</p>

<p>9 students graduated summa last year (of about 300), and the system works pretty well since there are a lot of outstanding students, and some get slight advantages doing easier weighted classes, so this gives an opportunity for all top students to get recognition. A “valedictorian” speaker is chosen from amongst those top students through an application process.</p>

6

<p>We have 1 Val (highest GPA) and 1 Sal (2nd highest). Nothing fancy.</p>

7

<p>We have two vals, though one may drop to sal or lower by the end of the year. One of them has a 4.0; the other one was a year advanced in language and so was taking weighted classes before the rest of us, though she has a B or two. There are several sals, however–all the IB kids who have one B. </p>

<p>The year before had two vals and one sal, and the year before that there was just one val. I prefer it that way; 17 is absurd!</p>

8

<p>I guess that I forgot to mention that this year is significantly higher than typical for my school. The average amount of vals per year is probably around 8. I do not know why there are so many more this year.</p>

9

<p>If there is a tie for Valedictorian or Salutatorian, then there will be multiple of them. It’s not really common though. We have unweighted GPAs but weighted class rank, so I suppose if there was a tie in GPA, they would need to have taken the same amount of APs as well.</p>

10

<p>My school doesn’t have any valedictorians. You are very lucky. They actually recognize achievements at your school.</p>

11

<p>My school has a long tradition of having great Valedictorians, as they, along with the Salutatorian, go off to great colleges (Princeton, Cornell, JHU). The rest of the class usually goes to one of five possible state and community colleges.</p>

12

<p>[There</a> can only be one!](<a href=“http://ny-image3.■■■■■■■■/il_fullxfull.63409071.jpg]There”>http://ny-image3.■■■■■■■■/il_fullxfull.63409071.jpg)</p>

13

<p>my school had 2 last year, because their gpas were the same down to the .000_ decimal point… crazy! we don’t rank either… in a class of 100, because the school is so hard already that if you are getting a B+ average you work really hard already so its not like some public schools where you can have a 4.9 Gpa or something… thats a joke!! if you have a 100 in every single class and all your classes are AP’s (not allowed at my school) then you could have a 4.8 at the very highest but this obscene gpa inflation defeats the purpose! i just don’t understand it, because public school kids look so good on paper when they have a 4.5 gpa versus my measly B+/A GPA involving like 3 honors / APs per year and 4/5 hours of work a night.
i guess really though none of that matters because colleges like some schools better than others bc they know they are harder</p>

14

<p>My school has usually one Valedictorian and one Salutatorian, but one year a couple tied for Valedictorian b/c they took the same classes and community college classes (I am suspicious…even though I know both of them are smart)</p>

15

<p>Yah, our school does this dumb thing where they only weigh four classes per year, so no way you can be truly at the top if you do take everything.</p>

<p>So, yup, 15 to 20 vals sounds about right. :)</p>

16

<p>More relevant, how does this work with the fact that the state of Georgia just guaranteed the tuition of the valedictorian from each high school in Georgia?</p>

17

<p>Class of over 650, usually have around 30 valedictorians. IB/AP school so we have lots of weighted GPAs. I think we should have 1 valedictorian and a salutatorian. It gives people more credit and having so many valedictorians just looks bad/weird?</p>

18

<p>I just found out that my school has an “application process” for valedictorians. So it doesn’t matter if you rank number one. Last year, there was 7 valedictorians.
The criteria are:
GPA more than or equal to 4.2
Complete the application
Write an essay
Get teacher recommendations.
I am not sure on the process of picking the valedictorian speaker since there can be more than 1 val.</p>

19

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<p>lol, this happened at my school last year. Only they weren’t dating by graduation…awk.</p>

20

<p>At my daughters school anyone with a weighted gpa of 4 or greater is a Valedictorian. I think it usually ends up being about 20 students per class of about 600-700. The top student receives the title “Scholar of Scholars”.</p>