I am a current high school junior that will be applying for college in the fall. I have been valedictorian for all my high school career, and people have always told me how amazing this is for college. However, after coming on CC for a while, I have begun to realize how little grades are in college admissions. Can anyone tell me how important being valedictorian is in the admissions process, if at all?
Well grades and course rigor are the most important factor in admissions. But colleges that are ‘holistic’ look beyond the numbers which mean they are looking for a fuller picture of the applicant. It doesn’t seem to me that being val or not (while a nice honor) is all that significant as long as you are in the top of your class other factors can be as or more important. Test scores are certainly significant. I also don’t know how you can be the val ‘for all my high school career’ since it seems to me that the designation is given once a year to a member of the graduating class in the spring.
Being Valedictorian gets you a couple extra points. It is a 1,000 point scale.
How can you be valedictorian “for all your high school career”-- isn’t the valedictorian the speaker at graduation???
Every single school in the country has a valedictorian. There are over 37,000 high schools in the US.
It counts, but it’s not a deal breaker.
Your grades and test scores are important. Being valedictorian can be important for certain merit scholarships that have that honor as criteria, but it won’t matter much once you are in the top 5 to 10 percent of your class otherwise.
Valedictorian doesn’t count at all. Vals are named AFTER college admissions occur. Your class rank counts at tmost schools but they usually care about the top 5-10%.
When he says he has been Val all of high school he means his class rank has remained at 1 at the end of each school year from his freshmen year to now
Yes, I guess I worded it wrong, but as @Jcannon1023 said, I have been ranked 1st for all of high school.
Some people seem to think that being Val is a ticket to any school you want to go to. It’s a nice honor, you get your pic in the school newsletter, and that’s about it. Schools are not going to care one whit about the tiny difference in grades that lead to someone being 1st, or 2nd, or 10th in a class. Plus, the weighting system schools use vary so much that what might be val at one school would be 15th in another school. Another reason not to get too worked up about it.
It is a nice honor. It will be great for your letter writers to mention it, and having a class rank of 1 out of X will look good on your application, too. But, yeah, being number 2, 3, and 4 is not bad either. Or anywhere in the top 5 or 10%.
My high school just graduated 500+ kids.
That means that 50 kids are in that top 10%.
And when they applied last fall, they had no idea which one would be at the top-- the numbers at the very top FREQUENTLY change over the course of Senior Year.
Valedictorian no longer reflects the same honor as it did in the past. It’s been diluted based on differing definitions across high schools. Colleges are looking at your course rigor in conjuction with your gpa more than the descriptor of ‘valedictorian’.
Plus, by the time you’re typically named valedictorian, admissions are long over.
Being #1 of your class means you’re a rock star in your class but it may not mean anything outside your school. Class rank just places you in the context of your school. Course rigor (do you challenge yourself?) and grades (how well you performed in these challenges) are more meaningful academic markers, along with test scores (how do you compare to other applicants?)
Our school identifies Valdictorian at the end of the first semester Senior Year. At many schools we looked at, they do offer additional merit awards, but not sizable . The one benefit in our state is in our state run scholarship program , if you don’t meet the SAT score requirement to qualify for top scholarships, being Valdictorian will qualify you for that scholarship . I don’t know what state you’re from or if they have a state program. I’d also like to reinforce what @bjkmom said. By the time you reach jr or sr year , ranks will most likely change multiple times. The differences between GPAs can be hundredths or tenths of a point different.
I think the folks above are being a bit harsh. What being valedictorian means is academic excellence relative to your peer group. Being valedictorian normally comes with a very high GPA. It doesn’t guarantee anything but assuming you’ve taken rigorous courses and done well on standardized tests it positions you well. To put this in context 25 percent of valedictorians were admitted to Harvard in a recent year while the overall admit rate was 6 percent. Congratulations on your success thus far and good luck
@@j3916be – could you clarify that statistic for me?
Are you saying that 25% of Harvard’s incoming freshman class was Valedictorian?
Or that 25 % of Valedictorians get admitted to Harvard?
I can certainly understand the former, but I think a lot of Valedictorian-hopefuls are banking on the latter.
Harvard has a freshman class of approximately 1600 kids https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics
There are close to 37,000 high schools in the US. http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84 25% of that 37,000 would mean a freshman class of over 9,000… and one made up entirely of Valedictorians. Obviously not the case.
So, yeah, being smart enough to be Valedictorian certainly helps. But apparently 75% of the freshman class was NOT valedictorian according to your statistics.