<p>I needed to rant about my school's weird valedictorian system-so here it goes. Our school has a system where you're automatically ranked as #1 if you have 2 AP courses and about 4.0 GPA. THAT'S IT! So, with the system being like this close to the top 5%(20 students) of the class all share the title as #1. This is really frustrating because people with 2 AP classes is viewed the same as people with 8x as many. How would this be viewed by colleges if all 20 apply and they see that all twenty has the same ranking but drastically different GPA's? </p>
<p>Do any of you guys have similarly odd ranking systems?</p>
<p>My school weights honors classes and AP classes (which are 100x harder than honors classes) the same. As a result, kids who take only honors classes have ridiculously inflated GPAs while many kids who take lots of AP courses have much lower GPAs then they should have. That’s also the reason why people who aren’t in the top 10% frequently get into top schools/ivies. Overall it doesn’t really matter because my school doesn’t send rank to colleges, but it does if a student is applying for scholarships. Basically, someone who takes all AP classes and doesn’t get all As is SCREWED for scholarships because of crappy class rank.</p>
<p>That’s a very weird way to rank. At my school, 2 AP’s is the bare minimum that everyone must take in order to graduate, so we would end up having many people ranked as #1! But my school doesn’t weight GPAs so there’s no grade inflation whatsoever, which kind of sucks since every class must be Honors or AP excluding Arts and other electives. As a result many students at my school have lower GPAs but higher test scores.</p>
<p>@NerdyAsianKid that really sucks that honors are weighted the same. fortunately, honors classes are not weighted at our school because I’m sure all the kids taking AP’s will die of chronic high blood pressure</p>
<p>@wow…the variability among schools is crazy… but because of the courses are rigorous overall and correlate with test performances I’d say your school’s system makes some sense</p>
<p>honors classes weighted the same as AP’s (5.0). Only certain electives are weighted like orchestra, so if you play a string instrument you are set. I took business electives and was screwed by the system. I am ranked out of the top 15% but have an unweighted higher than some in the top 10% with a “most rigorous” courseload. I can kiss my chances of getting into a top-20 school goodbye…</p>
<p>@rundmc But it’s ironic, because my school is college prep so they really push going to college and 99% of the graduating classes go to college. But since our GPA’s aren’t 4.5s etc. not as many people get into prestigious colleges, though my high school is considered prestigious itself (#1 in TN and #26 in the US). But at the other schools in my district, you can get a 4.0 easily, but the education you get is very minimal. But they would still have higher chances of getting into better colleges since they have higher GPAs since most colleges look at GPA more than test scores. Sometimes I hate my school :(</p>
<p>To start, honors classes are the same as AP classes in terms of weighting.</p>
<p>Secondly, we have numerous honors classes that aren’t even counted for weighted grading. (makes no sense)
Third, my school is already overpopulated by geniuses.
Over 10% of each graduating class is a NMSF.
The <em>average</em> student takes 6 AP classes and passes 6 of their AP Exams (98+% get 3s or higher, 60+% get 5s)</p>
<p>I’m not even in the top half of my graduating class with a 3.8 UW and a 33 ACT… I’ve taken 8 APs and 6 Honors classes. I’m basically screwed by my class rank :/</p>
<p>@Seahawks506-maybe you can have your guidance counselor explain this somehow? I don’t see why an orchestra class is weighted and business class not. Ahh…if only we knew about the system pre-freshman year and planned it around the system…</p>
<p>^I had to explain it on the additional info section (I also couldn’t bring up weighted middle school grades) because I felt my counselor wasn’t comfortable doing it. However, his rec was very very good. </p>
<p>I agree that we got screwed over not only by our system but not planning around it. I know others were informed and gamed the system (my parents are very supportive of my education but clueless about the HS course strategy), and I was even told flat out by the same counselor that many avoided taking the business class simply because it wasn’t weighted. </p>
<p>I regret not gaming the system because of this stupid class rank issue, but I would take those business classes again. We don’t rank DECA students, but I am the top male by far in DECA at our school, one of the top programs in the state. </p>
<p>Like others ranting about their school, mine is another of the top-100 ranked ones. Man, it just hurts for us because without a doubt, many of us could easily be 4.0 valedictorians at other schools. 2260 SAT scorer is outside of the top 15%, sigh.</p>
<p>@Seahawks506 So true, I’ve heard so many people at my school say the same thing about how any of us could easily be valedictorians at other schools. But I’d still prefer the awesome education that I get at mine!</p>
<p>I’ll just say that at my daughter’s school, AP courses are only lightly weighted. So our valedictorian last year (not her by a long shot) was a guy who, while very smart, took a relatively light load of AP classes. But the bottom line is that he did not get into any of his top choices, despite being valedictorian (and likely high SATs as he was a NM finalist). Meanwhile a bunch of kids with lower class standing (who took tougher loads), including my daughter, got into a bunch of Ivies. So I wouldn’t recommend gaming the system so that you can have a high rank, if it means not taking a rigorous schedule.</p>
<p>our school rarely has complaints about the ranking system. The top 10 students usually have taken about 9 out of the 10 APs that our school has to offer (bio, chem, physics, euro, us, gov, microecon, lit, stats, calc). Maybe we just have a really friendly school… no one is really competitive about rank, yet we consistently matriculate students into top schools (9 into ivies out of 200 students, plus at least 25 others into comparable schools)</p>
<p>We did have a problem two years ago, though, when a student had a full scholarship to a school based on the fact that she was valedictorian. A junior decided, about in may, that he wanted to graduate early, which made him the new valedictorian. The senior filed a lawsuit against him so that she would not lose her scholarship. Though she lost, they kept her scholarship anyways.</p>
<p>Your rank isn’t as important as the courses itself and their grades. Since those determine rank, why look at rank - why not just look at the transcript itself?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What schools give scholarships to valedictorians? Doesn’t this discriminate against people at schools with percentile ranks (like mine; we only have it in 5% increments) or no rank at all?</p>