The VALEDICTORIAN & SALUTATORIAN advantage

<p>muay- here’s a UNC Chapel Hill admissions presentation (to their governing board) which highlights stats & what’s apparently important to them for freshman academic credentials as well as transfer.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.unc.edu/depts/trustees/PP%20912-%201%20FB%20Admissions%20Annual%20Update.pdf[/url]”>http://www.unc.edu/depts/trustees/PP%20912-%201%20FB%20Admissions%20Annual%20Update.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>You will see for freshman stats, top 10%, top 10 students, Val/Sal, and SAT scores are what they report, hence they must be important to admissions. For x-fer, its college GPA, SAT, then HS class rank…implying that your Sal standing would matter to UNC in their x-fer admit decisions. May not be as weighty as it would be for a freshman admit (as UNC in this case calls out Val/Sal as a separate, hence discretely important, stat for freshman admits). I suspect its not quite the x-fer hook you desire, but nevertheless an advantage.</p>

<p>Thanks Papa. UNC Chapel Hill is my safety. In all respects my academics are nearly perfect, except my first semester university GPA (3.75) because it was the honors program and I had some trouble adjusting from HS to university.</p>

<p>According to Dartmouth’s CDS, only 36% of Dartmouth applicants report class rank, so the percentage of vals + sals reported really only works out to about 19% of the admitted class, although undoubtedly some of the 64% of applicants who do not report class rank would have been first or second in their class as well.</p>

<p>Sue22- I know for my kids schools, which do not rank, Val & Sal are awarded and presumably noted to admissions committees by the college counselor. However, I do agree that your interpretation is the right one & consistent with the other schools I’ve found so far (Brown & Penn) that clearly state that Val & Sal data are only for the small class portion whose HSs rank.</p>

<p>So if true, in part what bugs me is how Dartmouth misrepresents their facts in their annual reports. At a minimum their wording is misleading. How would you interpret what they wrote here?:

No footnotes or other explanation to caveat the above words. All of their news releases read similarly.
[TheDartmouth.com:</a> Dartmouth admits 465 in early decision](<a href=“http://thedartmouth.com/2012/01/04/news/admissions]TheDartmouth.com:”>http://thedartmouth.com/2012/01/04/news/admissions)</p>

<p>Here’s how Georgetown words their class rank description of the admitted class of '14:

</p>

<p>[Georgetown</a> University- Office of Undergraduate Admissions](<a href=“http://www12.georgetown.edu/undergrad/admissions/applying_firstyear_sdprofile.cfm]Georgetown”>http://www12.georgetown.edu/undergrad/admissions/applying_firstyear_sdprofile.cfm)</p>

<p>They are basically implying that the data from HSs that rank is a representative sample of the entire admitted population. Dartmouth is probably doing the same, but does not overtly state so (bad boys).</p>

<p>Papachicken,
I agree. Either someone at Dartmouth doesn’t understand their own data or they’re being a bit weasely with it. It’s also notable that percentages of highly ranked applicants and acceptees is likely to rise naturally as schools where class rank hurts their kids stop reporting it. In other words, schools like St. Paul’s and Andover don’t report class rank because they truly are Lake Woebegone learning communities. Everyone is above the average of the general populace, so the number 4 or 5 student may still be smarter and better prepared than the valedictorian of a weaker school.</p>

<p>At my kids’ high school, they are in the majority of schools that do not report rank. However, in the School Profile, they do list the highest GPA earned by the class when they state the range of GPAs. Based on this colleges can easily identify who the Val is since their GPA will match the highest in the stated range.</p>

<p>I have heard of other school where Val and Sal are named even though class rank is not provided. Perhaps adcoms call GCs if they want to verify an applicants status?</p>

<p>I agree that it seems horribly dishonest to extrapolate data for the entire freshman class based on hard data from only 36%.</p>

<p>Perhaps the key to determining which colleges are fudging their data is to compare their reported Val % to the Sal %. If the numbers are honest, I would expect these two figures to be very close if not identical. In Georgetown’s case (as one example) where they accept more than three times as many Vals as Sals, I would chalk it up to creative accounting.</p>

<p>just found more Dartmouth data on Val & Sal numbers (of each per year), this time not a hyped news release, but in their fact book…& guess what, its clearer that there are only a subset of schools reporting. But I could see how someone could take their Val/Sal % of class box out of context.</p>

<p>see page 2: <a href=“This Page Has Moved”>This Page Has Moved;

<p>rmldad- 2 alternative theories to explain more Vals than Sals (discussed a bit in above posts)…1. Colleges flat out have a thing for Vals & admit more at a much higher rate, and/or 2. There are more Vals than Sals because of Val inflation of late. Both seem to be working now. All schools I’ve found data on report significantly more Vals in their pools and a significantly higher accept rate for Vals than Sals.</p>

<p>Here’s another example-- Swarthmore – where the Val/Sal data are presented correctly in one report, but in a misleading way in another report.</p>

<p>Misleading…Questbridge Swarthmore profile, class of 16
<a href=“http://qbguidebook.■■■■■■■■■■/post/24519496571/swarthmore[/url]”>http://qbguidebook.■■■■■■■■■■/post/24519496571/swarthmore&lt;/a&gt;

</p>

<p>Properly qualified: Swarthmore class of 14 news release
[Swarthmore</a> College | News | 967 Students Admitted to Swarthmore Class of 2014](<a href=“http://www.swarthmore.edu/news-and-events/967-students-admitted-to-swarthmore-class-of-2014.xml]Swarthmore”>http://www.swarthmore.edu/news-and-events/967-students-admitted-to-swarthmore-class-of-2014.xml)

</p>

<p>I wonder how many of these valedictorians are people from school’s like my D’s. Class size 500. All grades unweighted, no extra for honors or AP, no + or - grades to differentiate between the top students. So 4.0 is the max. The top kids at the school are all pretty smart and competitive, about 20 or so graduate with a 4.0 each year. So is my daughter a valedictorian? Her school does not rank for college apps, except by request for places that really require it, but her rank is ‘1 shared’ I suppose.</p>

<p>They ask on the Secondary School Report how many share the rank. When the counsellor writes down 20, it won’t look very impressive because that just means the top 5% out of 400.</p>

<p>Schools really need to calculate rank based on percentage averages. Otherwise it feels like an ‘everyone gets an award’ situation. There is no such thing as 20 different valedictorians in a school.</p>

<p>one more Dartmouth news release on the admitted class of '16, 3/12, this one properly qualified unlike the other releases I’ve seen so far. [Dartmouth</a> Offers 2,180 Students Acceptance to the Class of 2016|Dartmouth Now](<a href=“http://now.dartmouth.edu/2012/03/dartmouth-offers-2180-students-acceptance-to-the-class-of-2016/]Dartmouth”>http://now.dartmouth.edu/2012/03/dartmouth-offers-2180-students-acceptance-to-the-class-of-2016/)</p>

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<p>Perhaps this is an editorial issue at Dartmouth’s various media? The quote above is from Dartmouth Now, run by Dartmouth’s Office of Public Affairs. The releases that have not qualified the Val & Sal data are from “The Dartmouth” a student run newspaper.</p>

<p>Upon further investigation, could be seeing the same issue with Brown’s media/reporting. The Brown data in post 9 above are officially reported by Brown admissions, and they are properly qualified. Here’s a non-qualified (hence misleading) Brown news story on admitted class of '16 from the campus daily paper, presumably largely student run:[Web</a> update: U. accepts 2,760 to class of 2016 - The Brown Daily Herald - Serving the community daily since 1891](<a href=“http://www.browndailyherald.com/web-update-u-accepts-2-760-to-class-of-2016-1.2722213]Web”>http://www.browndailyherald.com/web-update-u-accepts-2-760-to-class-of-2016-1.2722213)

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<p>Well, we don’t really have a valedictorian, that’s true. And as for salutatorian, I don’t know what that would even be. The school doesn’t calculate anything based on percentages. Everyone with a 4.0 gets an asterisk next to their name on the graduation program. I don’t think anyone thinks about that as an award at her school, since they don’t have it. Kids get other awards. When they ask for class rank on applications she generally leaves it blank.</p>

<p>Morty Schapiro, former Williams president now president of Northwestern, co-authored a study about admissions modeling (specifically yield prediction) summarized here:
[Matriculation</a> Matters - Refining the college admissions guessing game](<a href=“http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/index.php/kellogg/article/matriculation_matters]Matriculation”>http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/index.php/kellogg/article/matriculation_matters)</p>

<p>Interesting blurb about the Val/Sal phenomenon:

</p>

<p>Back to my original premise, this tends to support that Vals & Sals have many more choices, hence have a significant advantage in admissions.</p>

<p>wow, check this anti-Val advocacy site:
[Valedictorian</a> Controversy | References | Wix.com](<a href=“http://sgaubatz.wix.com/valedictorian-controversy/references]Valedictorian”>http://sgaubatz.wix.com/valedictorian-controversy/references)</p>

<p>…back to the misleading text when class rank admissions data are not qualified, even MIT’s newspaper seems to have fallen in this trap (class of '14):

</p>

<p>[MIT</a> announces yield % - The Tech](<a href=“http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N27/admissions.html]MIT”>http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N27/admissions.html)</p>

<p>So, what’s the net-net on all this? Val/Sal may help or may not be the tip? Colleges have different qualities of reporting? Some folks would like to quantify, but forget the role of holistic? Harvard has 14000 4.0 apps-- and somehow culled them down into a good class- and even included some lower than 4.0 kids. </p>

<p>I agree it’s interesting to look at figures colleges post and see the bundling of kids with top stats. But, with 15-35000 apps for, in many cases, less than 2000 seats, these elite colleges can cherry pick. These adcoms are up on their game and trends evolve. Most especially after 2008- I am not sure what is really to be gleaned here.</p>

<p>It can seem V/S have more choices- but with 70% of vals being rejected, there is no absolute. Somehow, you’d have to see what the pattern is for vals and sals themselves- not just what that college does with them. How many V/S get one of their top three choices? What else made them compelling, beyond stats?</p>

<p>I’m not sure that it’s having the title of valedictorian or salutatorian that confers an advantage. I think it’s more likely that being a top student who has taken the most challenging classes is more likely to result in admission to a top school, and a high percentage of students who fit that profile are valedictorians or salutatorians.</p>