<p>I attended a HS which did not name a val,sal or top ten. Everyone was able to find out their class rank and everyone told, so we all knew who they were anyway. And the competition was fierce. I thought then (and now) that it was wrong for these students not to be formally honored by the school. BTW the school changed it’s policy a few years after I graduated because people wanted these students honored.</p>
<p>D’s class names a val/sal and top ten. Graduation is another 10 days away, D’s rank will be somewhere between #3 & # 10. She will be introduced at graduation and allowed to stand and that is it. Not much for 4 years of hard work. As for classes taken, in her school most people take honors classes anyway and the top students tend to take a lot of AP’s (which are weighted). In fact the GPA’s obtained by the top ten are always numbers impossible to achieve without taking (and doing well in) a number of AP classes.</p>
<p>The idea of “voting” for the val/sal reduces an academic honor to a contest of popularity and perception. D’s class has a few students who are not even in the top 10% who already get most of the class awards and so I could see exactly where this would lead.</p>