<p>at my school, some people are getting unfriendly now. it's annoying when people get jealous. not to me though, my grades arent that great. what about your school? is it every man for himself at the highest rankings?</p>
<p>It never was until we got class rank this year (junior year), now everyone is paranoid and busting their tail to get an A on everything.</p>
<p>my school is really annoying. ive felt that way since i stepped foot on that campus 3 years ago.</p>
<p>I haven't seen any unfriendly competition, usually because the valedictorian is far ahead from the others). </p>
<p>Personally, I'm only in 10th grade, so I haven't seen any of this behavior yet.</p>
<p>i know what your taking about. the vale and his group (#4, 5 in our class) is very spiteful of me (im 2nd) because they have very weak ECs. i'm also not the type of person who hangs out with really smart people so thats where I find happiness, with people who don't care about grades and numbers, my friends. ignore the spiteful ones and have fun in high school.</p>
<p>I'm not really friends will many of the other #1s (there are about 8-10 because my school doesn't weight grades :mad: ), but I don't dislike them, and I doubt they dislike me. (There are only maybe two that would come anywhere close to being serious competition for me, if AP classes and standardized test scores were factored into ranking. The rest are actually fairly mediocre, for future valedictorians.) I have a very friendly relationship with one or two of them, who are more part that group... but see, they've all been in the district's accelerated program throughout elementary and middle school, during which time I was homeschooled, for the most part. That's why I'm sort of an outsider. And of course there are other reasons there that come into play when choosing your group of friends in any situation--values, interests, hopes for the future... I don't have these in common with the other vals-to-be.</p>
<p>However, I am one of a couple people about whom some of the other "Challenge Class" (accelerated program) alumni--not necessarily all high-achieving high school students--have a sort of running joke... so when we do something amazing, they say "Pfff. What did you expect? It's [name]." Or, "Yeah, it'd be 'Wow, awsome job!' for any of us, but it's like, 'Yawn, piece of cake' for [name]." Or, if we do something that only an "overachiever" would set out to do, "Oh man, that [name]! Always goofing off/slacking/getting in trouble... tsk, tsk!" There are some real clowns in the Challenge Class set. :p</p>
<p>I think in general my school is a very friendly environment. There is some competition, I'm sure, but most of the competition I've seen has been friendly rivalries between friends.</p>
<p>None here. Really, a "C" here is a God-send. So, we concentrate on our OWN academics and less on others'.</p>
<p>thank god it's not like that around here. all the kids in ap classes are the same people and we always copy off each other and compare notes etc. except this one girl. she's not so bad sometimes, but can be a little stingy (go figure she's gonna be our val.)</p>
<p>Haha, I remember #2 at my school kept worrying about #3 and how far ahead she was. Now she got a B in physics, and she's #3...I've never seen people rag on the valedictorians, though, since they're usually considered deserving of their status. Or maybe they just say stuff behind my back.</p>
<p>I think this is found more at schools that try to have a definative #1 which in my opinion is a mistake just for this reason of unhealthy competition. Our school in my kids years had 7 and 6 validictorians. Of those groups 3/4 hung out together and were friends. There was no reason not to pull for each other as their was streght in numbers. They all ended up with great packages and did not have to sweat each other's efforts out. I think that just creates more undue and really unjust stress to an already stressful situation. </p>
<p>The top 1% is the top 1%, they shouldn't have to worry beyond that.</p>
<p>competition is crazy high. people would do just about anything to get an A... and seeing how many people are taking 11+ APs in the school.</p>
<p>Yes, I've seen it. People tried to sabotage me in a global honors class when I was sick... (multiple people, individually, telling me a test was downgraded to a quiz...i would have gotten a 0 if i hadn't asked the teacher) and another incident in freshman year! Now i can never get sick/miss school</p>
<p>not at my school, by junior year basically everyone in the advanced classes is pretty friendly with each other. Of course it helps that none of us could figure out who the val is gonna be if we tried</p>
<p>We have a similar system to OpiefromMayberry's. Our school gives the top 15 or so Valedictorian status, which is about the Top 5%. Rank's never a really big deal. It's fun to speculate about but we wouldn't be rude to each other over it.</p>
<p>I don't think we have specific ranks--just deciles and such--but there is competition, definitely. Especially in class. There's this one kid who kept on asking me, "WHAT DID YOU GET?!" in a really competitive manner and so I asked the teacher to move.
It gets annoying. Happens outside of class too, and other kids would just walk around "interrogating" people regarding what they got on this test and that test. And then they'd blurt out something like: "OH I HEARD THE HIGHEST SCORE WAS ---!!"
It's freaking stupid because IMO the highest grade in a class and a lower grade of the same letter grade is the freaking same thing on the report card. The way my school weights, it is. An A = 4 pts for nonweighted classes and 5 for weighted (AP, honors).</p>
<p>Well, I don't think it's stupid. I know I ask the same questions myself (although not in the tone you imply). The thing is, I don't ask it to compete with others, I ask so that I know how I've done relative to other people. If I'm near the top then I know that it's not my fault, and if I'm starting to slide down to below a significant number of other people, I know I need to work harder. It's not that I HAVE to know how many people I've beat/beat me...</p>