How can scholarships and acceptances be based on val and sal when those are not known until June finals?
Our high school valedictorian is determined in October of senior year, I presume so the kids can put it on their applications. I don’t know what happens if you decide to have a serious senior slump in the spring.
DD’s school announced V/S in January. They only use up through the 1st semester of senior year. It was interesting to see the class ranking second semester. The Val stayed #1 but the usual #2 - 4 totally fell way down.
Ten pages in and I just realized that valedictorian is misspelled in the thread title - kind of ironic.
“Ten pages in and I just realized that valedictorian is misspelled in the thread title - kind of ironic.”
Ha! Pretty obvious I wasn’t the valedictorian at my high school…
I lot of great perspectives on this thread. Well done everyone.
By the time my D18 found out she was a Valedictorian (one of 10 at her school) it was a matter of days before graduation so her college application/decision process was long over, and it conferred no benefit in that regard.
But I do think it’s something she’ll always carry with her. Like winning the state championship in a sport or being the lead in the school play, being a Valedictorian is something she’ll always ‘have’ as accomplishment to look back on and be proud of.
And, of course, sitting on the stage during graduation and the callout in the ceremony printed program was not too shabby. Esp. since the only other callout was NMF which she also got! 
The Valedictorians did not speak at the ceremony, however. Teachers/staff chose 3 speakers that were representative of the class, and they did an excellent job.
Back in 1990, I was valedictorian at my city public school. No weighted GPA’s. I got a full ride to a state school that would give a full ride to every valedictorian in the city. I am thankful to this day.
My kids’ school honors the top 10% of the class, but only one val and sal. Weighted GPAs.
I don’t get the whole “gaming” issue. Students know the rules and make choices. If student A chooses to take harder courses or do more ECs that require a lot of time vs. Student B who is gunning for GPA. so be it. Provided they both know what the rules are and how a VD is selected. They make choices. The kid that plays 3 sports and is class president may not have time to take the classes that lead to VD. That’s a choice and won’t hurt him / her at all in college admissions as those ECs matter. The entitlement sentiment stems from the attitude of claiming “it’s not fair. I should be able to do all these things and be VD.” No, you shouldn’t be able to do anything. You either pull it off or you don’t. If VD is your goal, chose a different path.
:Life is full of the choices we make.
The point is that the “rules” often encourage kids to make poor choices that go against the grain of real education. For instance in some school system a student who takes an extra class, say Latin, takes a hit to their GPA because the school does not offer an AP in that subject. If they want to become valedictorian, and in some cases be then eligible for special scholarships, they are better off taking a standard course load than stretching themselves with the extra class.
The problem is usually in what the schools offer and/or will accept, and not in what the kids decide to pick. Don’t blame the kids who all play by the same rules.
The kids who are in the running for valedictorian do understand the choices that they are making. These are typically all college bound kids, and they all understand that the schools they aim for require a foreign language, so it isn’t necessarily a problem with Latin (or any language). Kids aiming for the top will load up on AP and honors classes according to what the schools offer.
A few years back, some kids in our local HS district felt it was unfair that the formula for weighting GPA also included the grades that kids got in their mandatory classes (which included a choice of music, auto/shop class, art, etc., as well as PE) and electives like additional choral/band. Kids who are elite musicians were basically told after 8th grade, if they wanted any chance at val/sal they’d have to give up their instrument because of the course weighting. So a student representative to the local BOE proposed that they refine the weighting formula to allow these kids to take up to three level one courses as pass/fail, and not counting toward their weighted GPA. And a couple years later a “band kid” became salutatorian and went on to Princeton. The next year both the valedictorian and salutatorian took the same auto/shop class as one of their pass/fail options.
The top kids will generally still figure it all out. They notice that cramming in an extra weighted A or three in an AP level is still better than an A in a level 1 class. These kids work with the guidance dept and get approval for independent study, summer coursework, community college dual-enrollment, and online honors-level classes that will bump their weighted GPA, when the regular department offerings are not at their level.
@VickiSoCal - the val and sal are determined by highest 2 weighted GPAs as of the mid-term grade of Spring of senior year - because after 3.75 years they know who the top kids are. It has occasionally happened where senioritis kicks in, and the final class rank numbers vary. But as long as all the kids involved understand what the process is, and they don’t change the formula once choices have been made, everything is as “fair” as possible.
Gaming is not between the kid choosing the sport or newspaper path vs the one choosing the val/gpa path. It’s betwee kids choosing the val path. If you participate in a sport at the high schools here in the bay area, you can’t take a 7th period, so that leaves one less ap/honors class, similarly if you do the paper, journalism is required, non-honors. People choosing this path know the choices they made.
But once you get the kids that are going to take all the AP and honors class they can, they evaluate everything wrt to GPA hit, and so you’ll try for the easier teacher, argue grades. Given all that most high schools now do not rank.