<p>The school states val is determined by GPA earned over a four year period. So she can't qualify as val, no matter how high the GPA may be. After viewing the video & watching her stilted speaking style & awkward phrasing ("called my parents and I'") I'm very surprised that she'd be the top student anywhere. A year of seasoning & a concentration on public speaking and communication would be worthwhile for this girl. She could benefit from some polishing to bring her presentation in line with her intelligence.</p>
<p>When any student or thier family makes a stink about the val selection, they always come out looking like the jerk.</p>
<p>Personally, I think the school is right - 4 years is 4 years. It's not "4 years in 3". She may have graduated, but she was never a "senior" - she skipped her senior year.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
When any student or thier family makes a stink about the val selection, they always come out looking like the jerk.
[/QUOTE]
yep.</p>
<p>She didn't go for 4 years - end of story.<br>
No one graduated early in our school district so it will never be a "problem" here.
By August none of this will matter.</p>
<p>Looking at the headline, I was prepared to be outraged. But you smart people have shown me I was wrong. Nice of the district to give her a special honor.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I will say by way of a bit of explanation that middle school grades for high school courses are shown on the transcript, but I've always been told they are NOT used when computing the high school GPA.
[/quote]
Are those high school credit classes taken in middle school that show on the transcript?</p>
<p>Here only the high school credit courses taken in middle school show up on the transcript. And those courses are counted in the high school GPA. No one at the school or district level recomputes the GPA without them. </p>
<p>It's hard to believe that colleges have the time to do it, either, especially with the record numbers of applications!</p>
<p>Her GPA probably results from crazy weighting. And careful selection of ONLY weighted classes, rather than choosing courses because they truly interest the student.</p>
<p>StickerShock, judging by her speaking, I think she is one of those smart kids who took the heaviest science and math courseload, which might not have been done with the sole purpose of bumping up the GPA. She might have been genuinely interested in those subjects. Some schools do weigh those higher than AP humanities.</p>
<p>(She's got a lot of trophies on those shelves in the background! I wonder where those came from - sports or math olympiads?)</p>
<p>I have this feeling that she must have been allowed to take AP classes before others in her class were allowed to. For example, ALL freshman take either regular or pre-AP Bio, and ALL sophomores take either regular or pre-AP Chem. A student isn't allowed to take AP Bio or AP Chem until Junior year. (Kids can be way accelerated in Math, however.) I bet that if you looked at her transcript, the "rules" about what classes you can take each year were (rightly) bent, due to her brilliance...but that allowed her to have more weighted courses than the other students.</p>
<p>Bunsen, all AP classes are given the same weight in our district.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Her GPA probably results from crazy weighting. And careful selection of ONLY weighted classes, rather than choosing courses because they truly interest the student.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>SS, that's the game in Texas. Choose to play. Choose not to play. Those are your choices. </p>
<p>Each district decides what goes into the GPA calculation. My D's was crazy weird and required a magic decoder ring. </p>
<p>And high school courses taken in middle school DID count.</p>
<p>Just to give an example of how this may have worked out, imagine that she and the other val are both in the band, and that the band is an unweighted grade. That would mean an extra unweighted A in his GPA, which could be enough to make the difference at these levels.</p>
<p>In my town's h.s. the concert choir class was just bumped up to honors level. Talented kids were torn between seeking a GPA bump & really wanting to participate in a fantastic program. They also switched to a decile system, so the kids taking arts classes are not so severely penalized.</p>
<p>I don't like weighted GPA and val title at all because they create unhealthy competitions. Regardless how the school district rules in this case, both kids are hurt.</p>
<p>The school did the right thing. The valedictorian should be a representative of the class of 2008. If she had skipped 8th grade and entered high school with the rest of the graduates it would be different.</p>
<p>So, if when she entered HS, she was so smart that they said, "It's ridiculous for you to take pre-AP Bio with all the freshman. We'll make an exception and let you take AP Bio with the juniors and seniors", a 100 would have given her 6.25, against the rest of her classmates who all had to take pre-AP Bio where a 100 gives you 6.0. </p>
<p>As far as I've ever heard, Freshman are allowed to take one AP class (AP Human Geo) and sophomores are allowed to take one AP class (AP World History.) If she was so smart that exceptions were made so that she was allowed to take AP classes earlier than her classmates, those .25s would start adding up.</p>
<p>Why in the world is regular 5.0? Not that I expect you to defend the whole school district. I've never heard of 5.0 as a base with 6.25 as the top.</p>
<p>Pity the poor adcoms who have to make sense of all the systems out there.</p>
<p>Even worse, there are some IB programs that have the max. set at 7.0, and there are some like my D's school that gives zero weight for advanced classes. Indeed, I do not envy those adcoms!</p>
<p>In last year's class, the person with the second highest GPA was named Val. at one of our local high schools with the highest GPA being named Salutorian.</p>
<p>The Val had been a 3 sport athlete for all 4 years and the credits for being an athlete, since they were unweighted, resulted in his having a lower GPA than the other student. They had both gotten straight A's in all of their academic classes, had taken the same number of honors/AP classes, etc. The only difference in their transcripts was that the Val had played sports and the Sal. did not. </p>
<p>The rules at this school are that the principal made the final selection with input from the department chairs - and they decided that the Val deserved to be rewarded for his extra contribution to the school (via athletics) rather than punished. </p>
<p>To their credit, when asked, the Sal. and her parents did not complain, simply saying to the paper that she thought the decision was fair.</p>
<p>This is just another example of, "But the rules don't apply to MY kid, because she's SPECIAL." Well, she may be special (and I daresay she is), but the rules still apply.</p>
<p>In d's school, there was a kid who left the high school in 11th grade to be homeschooled so she could do some intensive performing arts training that couldn't be accommodated by the regular school schedule (arts classes starting at 1, for example). We don't have "early release" or any other such allowance. The school system, as required by law, approved the home school curriculum.</p>
<p>Fast forward - now the mother is ticked off because the kid can't go to graduation and get a diploma from the high school! "Why shouldn't she? She went to school with these kids her whole life!" Maybe so, but she didn't graduate from the school - she graduated from home!</p>
<p>Life is full of choices. Once you make the choice, there are consequences, whether it be no valedictorian (if val is so important, stay in school) or graduation (if graduation is so important, stay in school). Accept the consequences or make another choice.</p>