I agreed (as an HS student).
Most schools don’t give ranks anymore besides vague percentages so I really don’t think anything beyond top 10% notation even gets considered unless it’s a very well known private schools that feeds many kids into specific schools.
I hate to see bright kids wasting time and energy on this. No one will care. You will get your pats on the back at graduation, if your school even does that–many don’t and I have no idea who the valedictorian or salutatorian were in my daughter’s high school–and then everyone will file out of the room and it will be forgotten.
If you’ve read any of the discussions of high school ranking systems on this site, you will know that they vary between schools, so depending on the details of the system, different students could easily have been chosen. You will also know that most of these ranking systems are designed so poorly they don’t even measure what they attempt to measure. So, it’s a little arbitrary, and it’s also demonstrably not correct in most cases.
Our school got rid of valedictorian, and everything else. Show a college that you are a good student, but realize that no student is perfect. They both look great, I wish we had them still, but I realize it really doesn’t matter. I would be ranked 2nd in class, but it would just impress my parents and relatives. It is not that great to be a valedictorian.
To be prestigious is to have something that most cannot acquire, and both of those positions show academic prestige.