<p>I (was) number three (pretty sure i dropped after this m.p. :/), and the two people above me are both quite smart. I think I may be smarter in the sense of getting material easily and knowing a lot of outside-school junk, and my test scores are much higher; but they are still very smart and not just getting through on effort. Our val was a semifinalist in Young Naturalists and is going to nationals in FBLA so she is def. clever. And our sal has a great sense of humor and is a very good writer.</p>
<p>I do have to add that though they are very smart they are where they are in the rankings because of effort. There is one student in school who is smarter than all of us in the top three but is outside of the top five due to general laid-backness about rankings. Which is probably why I am number three also, but w/e I’m sure every one would say that.</p>
<p>lol, i’m definitely brighter than the val & sal. (and i’m 3rd!.. missed sal by like half a point)</p>
<p>Yeh being val is just a matter of taking more AP’s and just loading your self up with no credit classes. One of my friends who is ranked 5 is not really that smart just took some non credits and pre ap’s. I know im smarter but luckily everyone in their is droping of like flies.</p>
<p>I’m valedictorian but did terribly on the SAT. The Salutatorian aced it with no prep. I guess I work hard in school to make up for my actual lack of talent. A few others did better than me as well. Oh well, rank is more a matter of work ethic than intelligence. I guess they have to have some intelligence to do well in APs, etc., but it is more work.</p>
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<p>hey! that’s me!</p>
<p>lol you must be humble too.</p>
<p>I was the valedictorian my freshman year (now I’m the salutatorian…Curse you, choir assignment, curse you! Yes, I’m serious; that’s what knocked me down!). See, I believe you can measure intelligence in several ways, and, grappling with an odd mind totally devoid of common sense but with fair amount of “book smarts” and quite a bit of general profoundness, I’m more inclined to want to believe that, lol. I hate how people try to judge my intelligence without knowing any of my opinions or values or philosophical musings or, heck, even really talking to me/knowing me at all. And, in a way, it’s more offensive to me for someone to make the unfounded assumption that I’m smart than for someone who knows me very well and whom I’ve revealed all my hidden layers to (which is actually nobody because I don’t really know how to do that, lol, but this is all hypothetical) to believe I’m dumb. Intelligence itself is just so elusive and trying to bottle it using numbers and benchmarks and incommensurable standards is just downright frustrating. And, yeah, I may be salutatorian, but I’m extremely co-dependent and the section of my mind devoted to living on one’s own just doesn’t work right. Lol, different sections of my mind all have different IQs; my common sense is the school dunce.</p>
<p>I also always go by the philosophy that if you think you’re smarter than everyone else, then, by virtue, you’re not.</p>
<p>Our valedictorian (for my junior class) is a smart guy, and I’m good friends with him, but I and half a dozen others are much smarter than he. He has played the GPA game and taken all honors/AP classes, and as such he currently has more Bs than As this year but is still number one overall (as opposed to I and others who have straight As). On the other hand I’ve taken band and it’s brought my GPA down.</p>
<p>Overall it doesn’t bother me because I still have a high rank and I know that being valedictorian isn’t extremely important when it comes to college admissions. He’s a good guy, I just don’t like how the whole weighted thing works.</p>
<p>Sorry, just wanted to add some thoughts to my previous post:</p>
<p>Also, the whole “cheating the system” thing sucks…I don’t know how prevalent it is in our school, though. And I thought this article was pretty interesting:
[Featured</a> Article](<a href=“http://www.ntlf.com/html/pi/0009/grades_1.htm]Featured”>http://www.ntlf.com/html/pi/0009/grades_1.htm)</p>
<p>For example, I got a B on last semester’s math final and got an A instead of an A+ as a final grade, but I might as well have gotten a 91% in the class even after working my butt off because anything from a 91% to a 97% registers the same way in the GPA system. And if someone got an 89% and someone else got a 91% in a class, there’s almost a 17% difference in that grade’s contribution to the GPA, if I’m calculating it right (which I’m probably not, lol). Our school’s GPAs are on a 12-point scale like this:</p>
<p>A+: 12 points
A: 11 points
A-: 10 points
B+: 9 points
B: 8 points
etc.</p>
<p>So the first person gets an 11/12 and the second gets a 9/12, but they only had a 2% difference in the class, which, again, (I think) was reflected as a 17% difference! I’d say that calculating GPAs this way (and wouldn’t it just be easier to average up each kid’s class numerical percentages, anyway?) probably accounts for a lot of discrepancy in who “should be” valedictorian vs. who is (maybe more so than cheating the system).</p>
<p>Valedictorian means nothing. Ironically the Sal normally gets into a better college/ is smarter than the valedictorian. </p>
<p>I think this year the Salutatorian got into some Ivies, while the Val didn’t.</p>
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<p>I would guess it’s a coincidence.</p>
<p>My school’s valedictorian is, frankly, an *******. Sure, he’s got the grades. But to anyone not in his milleu, well, he’s as cold as ice. As in a spoiled rich kid. Who bullied me for my entire time in high school.</p>
<p>And if you’re asking, he is Chinese… it’s as if, to compensate for having an intellect comparable to Einstein, he sold his soul to the Devil.</p>
<p>No, a valedictorian is not necessarily the smartest in a class. Getting A’s is an art and a science.</p>
<p>Smarter is such a bad word… intelligence comes from many backgrounds.</p>
<p>I think people who are Valedictorians deserve it. They worked the hardest for it. I mean, sure there may be smarter people in the class, the difference is, they were indifferent or to lazy to apply themselves. Thats why i admire our Val. He is hard-working and a great guy, although i really don’t know him that well. </p>
<p>WHAT I REALLY HATE IS, the people who keep on saying they’re so smart and say that they should be in the top ten. I don’t know if they are smart, but regardless, they should learn to be HUMBLE! Arghhhhh, srsly theres like more than a few kids in my school who are full of themselves. It gets pretty annoying after a while.</p>
<p>I’m not Valedictorian because I worked the hardest or was the smartest (though I may be the latter :)), I’m Valedictorian because I didn’t see any reason to take any academic classes that weren’t AP and getting an A isn’t very hard a lot of the time.</p>