<p>tokenadult, like many arguments we had before, I don't care where you are going to quote publications to against me. Try again to argue with me those are not the best in the country. Don't believe too much in those official rankings, they dont' get the value of high school education. Please no usnews or other publications, or Harvard research papers.</p>
<p>can you tell me how many schools don't have valedictorian? Now I am very curious which schools don't give the award to their valedictorian at the end of their high school year.</p>
<p>2008 Top Ten US High Schools by AIME Scores
Top ten high schools in the US ranked by the number of students who scored 6 and above on the AIME.</p>
<p>Rank ..... Name ................... # of Students
1. ....... Stuyvesant H.S., NY .......... 38
2. ....... Thomas Jefferson H.S., VA .. 33
3. ....... Phillps Exeter Acad., NH,..... 27
4. ....... Montgomery Blair H.S., MD... 19
4. ....... Bergen Academies, NJ ........ 19
6. ....... Palo Alto H.S., CA.............. 15
7. ....... Saratoga H.S., CA.............. 15
8. ....... Detroit Country Day, MI........ 13
9. ....... Harker School, CA.............. 12
9. ....... Phillips Acad., MA.............. 12</p>
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<p>2008 Top Ten US High Schools by AIME Scores<<</p>
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<p>That an extremely narrow and limited definition of the "best" high schools. Can you really say that a school that produced 13 math whizzes one year is a "better" school than the school that produced 12? That would be like USNews basing its ranking of colleges solely on how they do on the Putnam.</p>
<p>"can you tell me how many schools don't have valedictorian? Now I am very curious which schools don't give the award to their valedictorian at the end of their high school year."</p>
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<p>So did they misplace Yale by mistake? I don't think so.<<</p>
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<p>Duke regularly scores in the top five in Putnam but never gets close to that in USNews. And you also have schools such as Harvy Mudd and Waterloo doing well in Putnam too:</p>
<p>But of course that has no bearing on USNews because they don't use Putnam results to rank colleges. That would be just as as silly as using AIME result to rank high schools. </p>
<p>There is a lot more that goes into making a great school than turning out kids who can win math contests.</p>
<p>I have heard both of high schools that have no officially designated valedictorian (such as my son's high school) and schools that have multiple valedictorians (such as the high school I graduated from, many years ago). I don't envy the job of admission committees figuring out how to compare different students from different high schools. They figure it out somehow.</p>
<p>I've always though that if they had a situation like that, they would just examine the calibre of the school against the strength of recommendations.
It seems like, otherwise, they've have no way to measure candidates from weird schools against candidates from regular ones.
Like..... if you're really good at squeezing oranges to find fresh ones, and then you get a couple grapefruit, and you've no standard for the firmness of grapefruit.</p>
<p>Yes, I think college admission committees figure out somehow how to figure out what desirable characteristics applicants have, which can include but is not limited to class rank in high school. I don't think Harvard has quotas in the manner supposed in the thread-opening post of this thread, and if I remember correctly, even Harvard's own rejection letters acknowledge the possibility that sometimes Harvard misses out on admitting some very fine applicants. I wouldn't ruin my high school career worrying about such things if I were still in high school, but would focus on moving on to grown-up life in the real world outside of high school.</p>
<p>It is painful that I have to defend myself. Help please…</p>
<p>tokenadult, you are giving such inaccurate information. Many high schools don’t give the final ranking till the day the students graduate. That is why Harvard only requires to put down the 5% if the schools don’t supply the ranking at the time the students apply. Valedictorian is just the person with the highest GPA upon graduation, weighted or unweigted depending on the schools, if I understand this correctly. Some schools award the student with say White Paper or Principal’s award, rather than directly saying it. All three high schools around me give the rankings, so we are even.</p>
<p>coureur, I don’t want to open another can of worms to go down on this. But I have to thank you for not comparing my statements to say the Field Medal winners are the smartest in the world, or the Nobel Prizes winners. Speaking the Nobel Prizes winners, in the past three years, there has been a winner each year who graduated from a New Jersey high school. Can we say New Jersey high school systems are the best? Say no and give the reasons. Don’t compare my statements like …</p>
<p>waitn184, they need the legacy because those people will pay the school and other reasons. More or less it is about the money. The school I know: this year three got in Yale so far, two are legacies, one legacy in Brown, etc. I know them and some of their parents well. Again, it is mainly about the money. There are not the best in the school. About minority status, they look for those eventually the school can profit, either economically or politically, and in turn it is about money. They don’t want every kind minority, just the one they think it may have a potential. About parents, I provide information like what I am doing now, it may not be useful, but I try my best to explain. Good luck to you.</p>
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<p>coureur, I don’t want to open another can of worms to go down on this. But I have to thank you for not comparing my statements to say the Field Medal winners are the smartest in the world, or the Nobel Prizes winners.<<</p>
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<p>What? I didn't say anything about Field or Nobel winners. What I said is that there is a lot more determining which school is best than seeing which one can turn out the most math contest winners. </p>
<p>It's a whole wide world of knowledge out there. Education consists of a lot more than just math. And winning math contests is an extremely limited measure of a very narrow type of academic achievement.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Valedictorian is just the person with the highest GPA upon graduation, weighted or unweigted depending on the schools, if I understand this correctly.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>There are exceptions to this. It may be that that is the situation at all the high schools you know best, but I do know some counterexamples. On the other hand, I was in an online discussion elsewhere in cyberspace with a parent who mentioned that high school counselors can hint about class rank even in high schools with no official ranking, and indeed the Common Application secondary school report (which Harvard uses) permits counselors to make statements about how students relate to other students in their high school classes. </p>
<p>But anyway you and I both know that no college in the land simply goes down a list of the top high school students at whatever the top high schools are to admit students. Every college admits some students who were not the top students in their high schools, and every college admits a few students, at least, from high schools that are obscure and not particularly challenging. We all know examples of amazing high school students who somehow were passed over for admission to their favorite colleges. But it's my impression that most of those students who settle for plan B or plan C or even plan G for college still end up having great college experiences and great careers. So I try not to be concerned with worry about these issues.</p>
<p>tokenadult, sorry for my strong language. I was just trying to explain that there is no "qualified ORM" when you apply to Harvard, and people have fate too. Then I got involved into this high school ranking mess. I don't know much about Minnesota, only been there several times when I was a graduate student at Wisconsin. But, I can guess that Wayzata HS at Plymouth is probably the best in MN, and those people B.L., X.Z, from that school, plus M.H from Hopkins HS have great potential to get into HYPS. Those are all public information and I am sure Harvard knows it, since I know it.</p>
<p>the truth is, some of us find it af. action fair, some of us find it unfair. but other than proposing to amend the procedure in college campuses and businesses across the states, all we can do is hope for ourselves and for others. we've all heard this before -- i'm sure the adults on the thread know it better than the rest of us -- but life is not always fair. </p>
<p>i liked this girl who i was going to ask to semi-formal: she was gorgeous and i'm handsome and we liked each other. i was going to ask her on a monday after the weekend. some dude asked her on sunday. she said yes because she is the nicest girl on earth. i went to semi alone (this was junior year though). at the time, it was the most unfair trick fate had played on me. but looking back, i had a hell of a lot more fun going stag that night than i would have had with my prospect. and later, i went to prom with that girl. yahtzee.</p>
<p>you may not get in here, you'll get in there and vice versa. just hope for the best. things will work out.</p>
<p>But....that's like saying if something is difficult to change because it is well entrenched, you shouldn't bother.</p>
<p>There's a whole lot of societal injustice that gets perpetrated that way:
"But we've ALWAYS said marriage is between man and woman!"</p>
<p>"But blacks have NEVER been allowed to eat here!"</p>
<p>etc.</p>
<p>I view the current system of race based affirmative action as racial discrimination.
To me, living in a pluralistic democracy requires equal opportunity for all races but special privileges for none.
You can't correct things by robbing Peter to pay Paul.</p>
<p>To which one might reply with Anatole France's famous aphorism: "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges."</p>
<p>If your starting point is the result of centuries of legally enforced state subjugation of a class of citizens by race, it may not be sufficient to say, "From this point forward, we're not going to pay attention to race at all. The only things that will matter will be things that are unequally distributed across racial groups, and that relate organically to the past subjugation, so it will be difficult to tell that we've changed anything."</p>
<p>"But....that's like saying if something is difficult to change because it is well entrenched, you shouldn't bother."</p>
<p>again, c-hope, read closer:</p>
<p>"but other than proposing to amend the procedure in college campuses and businesses across the states, all we can do is hope for ourselves and for others."</p>
<p>to amend a procedure is a fancier way of saying to change something well entrenched. i never argued against civil disobedience in the case of rights for the african american or freedom for the hindustani or pakistani. i never argued against proposing to amend the constitution in favor of gay marriage.</p>
<p>my post -- which, unfortunately, may have been misunderstand -- aimed to convince people that simply whining or arguing against one another will not solve what can be solved with the thought, civil debate, and the propensity to act.</p>
<p>robbing peter to pay paul is wrong. but having pamela just saying that won't do much.</p>
<p>sorry for my previous, convoluted post. i hope this one made amends.</p>
<p>To which one might reply with Anatole France's famous aphorism: "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges."</p>
<hr>
<p>So the middle class people think they can do it, since they are neither rich nor poor. And they argue ... :-)</p>
<p>@prophet: I plan on being in a position some day to influence and inform a lot of our public policy. </p>
<p>@ JHS: I may be misinterpreting what you've said, so if you feel at any point I'm straw manning you, please tell me: </p>
<p>I don't see how any consideration of a person's race in measuring their achievements isn't racial discrimination. To say "people with this person's skin tone suffered in the past/were privileged in the past" requires the assumption that a person's skin is an integral part of who they are, that there is some inherent difference between a black person, or a white person.</p>
<p>Of course, that's absolute nonsense. Over and over and over (the phenomena I have in mind is the Flynn Effect I believe), it has been shown that when the standard of schooling people receive converges, so does their performance.
The education someone receives is a function of their family's wealth, something beyond their control, much like race.
But unlike race, I think it is the single factor that determines opportunity.
<em>please see my post before the one you responded to where I gave a pretty long/drawn out, but relevant example</em> (Search for Buckingham Browne and Nichols, my post should come up)</p>
<p>I would like to know what the justification is, then, for considering the race of an applicant.
To correct wrongs done to them? That assumes you can measure the carried over effect of discrimination exactly as it impacted a candidate. It's far to easy to substitute abuse in the other direction to 'correct' previous injustices.
I'd like to make myself very clear; I'm well aware of the divide in wealth of white and black America (yes....I am just using those two for the sake of simplicity..), I'm not naive.
However....I hold that the divide in opportunity that results is a divide of wealth, and not a divide of race, and that any policy which seeks to address that divide should focus on that inequity in money and not pigmentation.</p>