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That depends entirely on the school in question. When colleges were more open with their admissions data, you’d see this pretty clearly with some of the admit rates. The difference in admit rate between vals and sals at Penn in particular was very noticeable. Dartmouth has a rather large gap as well – vals make up 30% of incoming freshmen with a class rank, but sals make up only 10%. (That 40% of ranked students were #1 or #2 is in itself quite telling, IMO.) </p>
<p>It’s also worth noting that many schools reserve merit scholarships specifically for valedictorians and sometimes salutatorians. Very rarely do extracurricular activities provide automatic scholarships the way GPA/class rank and test scores do. </p>