<p>I'm hoping to be a competitive candidate for schools such as MIT, Stanford, and Caltech. To what extent does class ranking matter for these schools? I'll probably end up with a GPA of 3.98 and be ranked somewhere in the top 10 (hopefully top 5?) of a graduating class of around 450. However, today I heard that being valedictorian is a major boost in one's application - is this true?</p>
<p>Consider the fact that there are 26,407 public secondary schools and 10,693 private secondary schools. Lets assume each school has a valedictorian, than means there are 37,100 valedictorians. Consider the fact that valedictorians are the ones who are giving a speech at their graduation, what is so special about that? Also, consider the school that someone goes to. If your school is a drop out factory, and being #1 is not that impressive. I am not saying your school is, but I am just illustrating the fact that numbers are arbitrary. I can say, those who are at the top of the class do deserve credit, but I am merely saying that they are those who play the system. That sounds like a negative connotation, but I am saying, that they are the ones who conformed to society that says to excel in school. They worked hard to get up there. </p>
<p>Just disregard numbers and just do what you love. That has been my philosophy: disregard numbers, acquire knowledge. There is more to learn out side the system, pursue those.</p>
<p>Class rank is important, but David is right, being #1 in a trashy school doesn’t say anything. Just try to stay in the top 5-10 percent of your class, then it looks good. Class rank is what they look at after gpa, remember, also they want to see improvement, so try to get your class rank to go higher each year. It shows you have a good work ethic.</p>
<p>Well, these are some goofy arguments: just because some valedictorians come from schools so bad they can’t read their own diplomas does not mean it’s not extremely helpful, and preferable, to be ranked #1 rather than #10 – students coming from “trashy” schools don’t apply to elite colleges! The fact is that valedictorians are often admitted at twice the rate of those lower in the rankings; at the same time, 80% of the vals that apply are rejected.</p>
<p>Not being valedictorian won’t keep you out, but you’d better have something in your portfolio of accomplishments that is above and beyond what the top students in your school have accomplished. ECs, community service, and national awards are usually necessary additional elements needed to get admitted to MIT or Stanford, science awards and math competitions for CalTech.</p>
<p>Depends on your HS. Our #5 routinely gets into Stanford. (The Val into H or M.)</p>
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<p>I’ve seen that claim multiple times but I don’t believe it is true. If your school ranks then you would obviously want to be as high as possible, all else being equal (as previous poster stated). But a major boost just for being a valedictorian? There are other things that will differentiate the top academic performers at your high school that will be more important than a few tics in class rank. Just my opinion.</p>
<p>The National Association for College Admission Counseling apparently claims that “40 percent of high schools across the nation have kicked class rank off transcripts or simply don’t provide it to colleges at all”. Seems high to me but that’s what I found when I searched for it. Why would highly selective colleges give a major boost to something that does not even apply (or is watered down by multiple valedictorians?!?) to 40% of high schools? (not to mention the home schooled kids)</p>
<p>Our local high school recently dropped class rank after years of fighting against the schedule construction gymnastics that go along with trying to move up the ladder. They tried changing weightings around but I guess they just couldn’t get kids to stop dropping non-weighted classes from consideration. And with a large number of unweighted 4.0’s every year the quest for valedictorian usually came down to who didn’t play a musical instrument and who chose the right foreign language in junior high. Apparently a tuba playing German student is mathematically eliminated from the valedictorian hunt unless he can get a note from his doctor to get out of PE! Ha, just kidding, but not really all that far from the truth. Colleges know all of this goes on in high schools and I can’t imagine they bestow any significant admissions boost to a valedictorian over someone with a highly similar transcript with one too many art classes. </p>
<p>YZ</p>
<p>No, Valedictorian is not a major boost to adcoms. Not only are there at least 25,000 US High schools, but a good many have multiple Vals. I’ll bet there are 40,000 Vals in the U.S.</p>
<p>I don’t think being Valedictorian is very important, as long as you’re highly ranked enough.</p>
<p>In my school, the valedictorian last year went to Dartmouth. However, this year, our (cheating) valedictorian is going to FSU, whereas two non-valedictorian top 10% students are going to Yale and Notre Dame.</p>
<p>You guys are whistling past the graveyard. Everything you say about the large number of valedictorians out there is true, as is the point about being valedictorian not guaranteeing you anything at admissions time. But that’s not to say it’s “not very important” or “not a major boost.”</p>
<p>Very few colleges provide us detailed information on this. Brown does, and at Brown the figures are impressive. For Brown’s Class of 2014, the overall admit rate was about 10.1%. The admit rate for valedictorians was 21%, or slightly more than double the overall rate; for salutatorians, 16%; for those in the top 10% of their class, 11%; and for those below the top 10% of their class it was 2%. </p>
<p>Of course, being valedictorian also correlates strongly—almost perfectly—with having top grades, or at some schools having top grades in rigorous courses, which of course is just what the colleges say they’re looking for: a demonstrated track record of academic success while tackling the most rigorous curriculum available to you. Being valedictorian—especially being valedictorian at an academically strong and competitive school—is prima facie evidence that you’ve done that, and (the way your HS measures it) it’s prima facie evidence you’ve done it better than anyone else at your school. That’s not to say every valedictorian is going to be admitted; far from it. Brown rejects almost 4 out of every 5 valedictorians who apply. But it rejects everyone else at even higher rates: roughly 5 out of every 6 salutatorians, and 9 out of 10 who are in the top 10% of their class, and 98 out of 100 who are below the top 10% of their class. So other things equal, you’re much more likely to admitted to Brown if you’re a valedictorian than if you’re not, roughly twice as likely as the ordinary well-qualified applicant (those in the top 10% of their class). I assume a similar pattern applies at other super-selective colleges and universities.</p>
<p>[Brown</a> Admission: Facts & Figures](<a href=“Undergraduate Admission | Brown University”>Undergraduate Admission | Brown University)</p>
<p>I just have data for Notre Dame.</p>
<p>Their general admit rate this year was 24%; the rate for Valedictorians was 30%. As the 24% pool includes many outside of the top, say, 5% of their class, I would find it likely that being Valedictorian vs. non-Valedictorian top 5% does not provide a statistically significant difference.</p>
<p>Given your Brown stats, it seems that there is an advantage there. So it will vary based on school, I suppose. Some apparently care if you’re #1 vs. #2. Though there could be confounding variables.</p>
<p>The College Board profile page lists the % of students in the incoming class who were in the top decile of their high school graduating class. Because that’s a statistic everyone sees when they are researching the basic numbers on the college, I think all of the most selective schools seem to want to be able to report that nearly all their students are top decile. </p>
<p>There’s probably nothing you can do at this point to change your rank…these things always come down in the end to which straight-A student got that one extra weighted point somehow–maybe there’s an honors band but not an honors concert choir, and that point was lost on ambitious incoming freshmen.</p>
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<p>No doubt there is some variation by school on this. The data I’ve been able to find are very spotty, but it appears some other Ivies and some other top schools tilt at least as heavily toward vals as Brown does. Just a sampling gleaned from various sources the web:</p>
<p>Penn, Class of 2011: 46% val acceptance rate (probably much lower now as Penn has gotten much more selective)
Princeton, Class of 2010: 17% val acceptance rate v. 7.8% overall acceptance rate
Duke, Class of 2012: approximately 50% val acceptance rate, roughly twice the overall rate
Georgetown, Class of 2014: 56% val acceptance rate, roughly twice the overall rate</p>
<p>Another way to slice it: what percentage of the freshman class were vals in HS?</p>
<p>Dartmouth, Class of 2014: 32%
MIT, Class of 2011: 49%
Williams, Class of 2015: 56% were either vals or in top 1% of HS class</p>
<p>This may only differentiate students from the same school who took the same classes. It is all too easy for someone to push ahead to Valedictorian because they took a required unweighted health class pass/fail or chose not to take orchestra which can not get AP weighting. The holistic admissions process used by the most selective schools should not be markedly swayed by being Valedictorian if you are in the top handful of students taking the most rigorous course schedule available to you. If I were an adcom, I would actually hold it against a valedictorian if they took any lower weighted classes for a pass/fail or credit only option since I would assume it was done to bolster GPA and suggest this kid cares more about the GPA than about learning.</p>
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Closer to three times the overall rate, actually.</p>
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This is a good way of looking at it, though not all valedictorians are like that, obviously.</p>
<p>Visited Duke’s office of admission/ Blue Devil Days this year. Direct quote from Dean Guttentag: 1 in 4 valedictorian acceptance for 2015. Good news if you scored a perfect 2400 on your SAT - you had a 50% chance of being accepted for the class of 2015.</p>