<p>It’s a beatdown at my school… Nobody anywhere close</p>
<p>They took away community college GPA boost this year because people abused it… There are 24 APs and many honors courses, the record during the CC abuse was in the 4.9s… Now it’s only possible for a low 4.8.</p>
<p>My opinion: It’s mostly straight A’s to get the spot. Rank 2 and 3 have plenty of AP courses that they could have taken but they didn’t… I maxed out but have straight B’s in English which I feel is the major hump that someone has to get over to achieve valedictorian. The other classes are memorization–people who aren’t good at math/science still get the A by studying and practicing the problem algorithms. I really wish they made the tests harder and make it more problem solving based than just knowing each type of problem that is handed to you.</p>
<p>At my school, people are always trying to predict who the val is, but I don’t think anyone actually tries to be it. We try really hard to get good grades, so we’ll beat each other up to get board points, but we don’t care much about who’s getting ahead as long as the rest of us have As. Administration got rid of rank too, last year.</p>
<p>My graduating class has about 1200 kids in it. Students aren’t ranked officially, but the school publishes the top 10 ranking for every grade. To be valetdictorian, it’s pretty much a given that you have to take APs for every single class leading up to your senior year because since APs in my school are weighted, the valetdictorian usually graduates with a GPA of 106+
So yeah, to be #1 in a class of 1200, it’s pretty intense.</p>
<p>Almost none. But, I go to a noncompetitive public high school. I’m the Val and always have been since freshman year. I’m a rising senior now.</p>
<p>Weighted GPA’s are calculated on a 100-point scale. Pre-AP courses are +7% of that class’s grade, which is used in calculating the weighted GPA. For AP classes, it’s +10%. My GPA is just under a 105 right now, and I think there is are at least two points between me and the Sal.</p>
<p>In my school we don’t find out until there’s just enough time to write a speech for graduation :). The problem is that I go to an extremely competitive school with many very, very intelligent people in it so you can be a genius and get all As and barely be in the top quarter of your grade. Class rank comes down to hundredths of points, and one test can ruin all.
I’m dreading listing my class rank on my apps…</p>
<p>At my school, there are about 5 kids (I’m one of them) that competed for it. The only anomaly was this year where the kid that got it ran away with it because he appealed to the board of the school to be able to take more AP classes. Now, my school doesn’t rank so they will announce the top 10 at graduation in no particular order.</p>
<p>as far as I know, no one in my school tried specifically to be Val. only me and another guy were the obvious choices so we kinda just settled into those positions fairly easily</p>
<p>My grade has almost 900 kids. The top fifteen (We’re in “double honors” and have a GPA boost before we even enter high school) usually duke it out for val and sal. People are immediately kicked out of the running if they get a B. So basically to stand a chance, you need to pull off straight A’s throughout high school and cram in as many Honors/AP as your schedule can hold! My school is SO competitive. We pretty much have no life. :P</p>
<p>No class rank at my school, but there’s essentially tiers at my school, with a group of people in this range, a drop, then another group of people, etc…</p>
<p>Oh, there’s 100 people in my class and the tiers look like a bell curve.</p>
<p>I was intrigued by the valedictorian discussion, particularly that there are still schools where there is no frantic competition or there are multiple valedictorians. My son has a high GPA but killed his chances for valedictorian by choosing to stay in band because he enjoys it. Many top students take as many AP classes as possible and drop electives such as band or drama. (Not just to try for valedictorian - but to be in the senior top ten).</p>
<p>To control the craziness the school stopped allowing students to use college courses or online AP courses to raise their GPA. The past three years the valedictorians have been home schooled students who started public high school already having taken many AP classes. (The loophole the school still hasn’t closed is counting AP classes taken in middle school - AP Human Geography and Env Science are 8th grade options at the public schools but this year’s valedictorian had finished 4 AP classes before she started public high school in 9th grade.)</p>
<p>Our school was definitely not competitive. We had around 450 students in our class, and three were always neck and neck all the way through senior year (me and two guys). One guy really wanted it, the other guy and I didn’t really care. I had a lot of clubs and the other guy literally had band 3 or 4 class periods a day, but because he started doing AP intensive schedules freshmen year he could relax more senior year (AP Calculus as a freshman level genius). The two of us aren’t thrilled with the system and how it generally disadvantages kids who are good in the arts, plus neither of us like public speaking so that was also something neither of us wanted to look forward to. Overall the three of us were more interested in being involved in other things outside of school instead of focusing heavily on grades.</p>
<p>I am a rising senior. My school is a small school. There are only 27 students in my class. My school does not have a system of class rank. The senior class does have a valedictorian however. The whole valedictorian thing is ceremonial. Just to make sure all is fair, they calculate the weighted average of your senior year grades prior to graduation time. What you end up with is a grade out of hundred. The person with the highest grade is valedictorian. They don’t determine valedictorian based on GPA because it is possible to have a bunch of people with a 3.9 GPA, or more than one person with a 4.0. It is rare however, to have more than person with an average of 98.6342. Maybe another person could have an average of 98.7431 or whatever. I hope you get the logic.</p>
<p>Right now, I am competing with only one other person in my class. The competition is going to be tough, but I really want the title.</p>
<p>There wasn’t much of a race in my class 
</p>
<p>But the year before a girl tried to win by taking a class pass-fail, it ended up backfiring and she got 3rd. So there was some competition then. Class of 280ish.</p>
<p>My grade has like 80 kids in it. We’ve all known each other for a while (I entered the school in 6th grade) and becoming juniors, we all pretty much know who the valedictorian is going to be: this Asian guy and one of my best friends. The competition for salutatorian is pretty much between me and this other girl, another one of my best friends, haha. Neither of us really make it a competition though, it has just become a fact. Who knows though, some of our fellow classmates could surprise us!</p>
<p>I think I was ranked 12th out of 130 students in my graduating class. I didn’t try or care about my grades though. It is very weird that my sister was the valedictorian, first kiss girl was valedictorian (met her senior year), and my girlfriend for the past four years was valedictorian at her school.</p>
<p>Will probably end up having kids that become valedictorians as well at any rate…</p>
<p>my graduating class (2015) had 531 students as of the 2010-2011 school year. in general it isn’t too competitive. In my school, everyone who makes the Merit, Honor, or Principal’s list has their average made public (listed next to one’s name on the lists). Originally there was this one Egyptian boy who was the highest for the 1st and 2nd quarters, with like 101 or so. 3rd quarter, there was a girl listed with 119!!! </p>
<p>The sad part is that I’m pretty sure I’m the only one of the Top 10 that’s really a nerd/teachers pet etc. The Egyptian boy is quiet, a bit snobby, and fairly ghetto at the same time (don’t know how its possible!). The German-descent (I think) girl is very bubbly, popular, always talking with the teachers, and seemed pretty nice. My first impression is that she isn’t too bright, and I really think her 119 average might be a typo!</p>
<p>Anyways, the valedictorian race is never really competive at the schools here on Long island, since parents have such an attitude that “everybody’s above average”. Ugh! There was one school (the best one, to be exact) that had 7 valedictorians with a graduating class no more than 300!</p>
<p>I’m a valedictorian for all my years in school. Well I gotta admit, my race is VERY competitive (Asian race tends to be more competitive), but very very few manage to get all A’s. I got like all A+. I was the only girl to get the “[Insert my school’s name] award” (only 3 people got it…) not to mention the only person in my race to get it. But I worked my butt off for these A’s.</p>
<p>Yomama12, I think that is really sad that staying in band would lower your son’s chance at being valedictorian because they don’t weight an “easy” subject like band higher. At times I have been frustrated at our school system since there is NO weighting at all and a valectorian only has to have a 4.0 (UW) and have taken at least 5 honors OR AP classes. Sometimes that seems unfair when a valectorian could have taken NO AP’s (ie 5 or more Honors) and another kid could take 7 AP’s and have all A’s except one A minus and lose being valedictorian. However, listening to your story makes me thankful for our system. My son can take the band and choir that he loves and not worry about it hurting his GPA. He has taken almost as many AP’s as is possible in our school (we can’t take any in 9th and only 1 in 10th; he has taken 6 now plus one college class, Calc 3). I think that music is just as important to a liberal arts education as English, so it is a shame that some kids (not your son, but some of his friends) drop it just to “keep up the GPA”. Also, most colleges will “unweight” the grades of kids in schools that weight them. The college then either looks at the unweighted GPA or weights it with their own formula, so I think it is pretty silly that so many high schools weight the GPA. In our school system, an A is a 4.0 whether it is in an AP, honors, or regular class or even a dual-enrollment college class.</p>
<p>Sorry to say. But there were 43 graduate students were got into top 400 out of 100000. SO, the competition was cut throat. ended up 4/537 :(</p>