Val/Salutatorian - D is getting shafted!

<p>I tend to agree with corranged. The system had rules and no one was SHAFTED. OP's D had has higher GPA but lower honors/AP classes. She herself could have played the GPA game - taking bare minimum to boost her GPA. She had all the opportunities in the world to take those high GPA classes when her friends were taking band. Perhaps she did not want to take those classes because she did not want to work hard or was afraid of getting lower grades. Just a miscalculation on her part not a shaft by the system.</p>

<p>When it comes to AP classes not all schools offer that many classes. They don't have resources. In our district the requirement for AP teacher is to have graduate degree in that area.</p>

<p>But honors classes? They are dime a dozen. Schools don't have to do anything special. They can afford to offer lot more honors classes and enroll as many kids who want to enroll. That makes kids happy and strokes parents ego that their kid is taking all honors curriculum.</p>

<p>Wisteria, your reaction sounds like my mom's when she finds out that I know basically all my classmates' grades, SAT scores and AP scores. </p>

<p>The fact is, things have changed (obviously) and students are more open to sharing this information. I remember when I was in 5th grade and I wasn't allowed to open my report card until I got home so that no one else would know my grades. </p>

<p>Grades and scores are typical conversation topics, at least at my school, at lunch or in class or online (especially in difficult classes). Thus it is not unsual or too "competitive" for an involved mom to know the grades of two other kids. I'm close with my mom and she probably knows the grades of most of my friends and those in line for val/sal. </p>

<p>It's the person's choice to tell you the information, it's not like I or the OP or her daughter was beating it out of them. </p>

<p>That is high school in the 21st century. Interesting eh?</p>

<p>Just for the record, she did take all the honors classes she could logically take (would fit in her schedule and were available). The only one she didn't take was band - because she instead chose to take (prior to HS) private piano lessons. On all other accords, she took and did great at all other honors/ap classes.</p>

<p>She took as rigerous a schedule as her school's schedule would allow. </p>

<p>I love my D - she rocks in and out of school as far as I"m concerned! :)</p>

<p>Some of you may recall a situation I dealt with at DD's school a couple of years ago. There was a fault in the way they were computing weight vs unweighted GPA and my daughter's weighted GPA (with honors and AP courses) was LOWER than her unweighted...clearly not possible. It took months for them to resolve this situation, and in doing so, they had to recalculate ALL of the GPAs for the students who were then in 11th grade and below (they didn't do anything with the seniors that year). Well...one parent personally blamed ME...when her DD's recalculated GPA placed her #3 instead of #2 (like it was MY fault...). Bottom line...it didn't change who her dd was or her dd's achievements or what she was bringing to the table for college applications. In this day, sometimes 1/100 of a point separates the top 10 students at a high school. If that is all a college is looking at when awarding aid, I would think it a shame. Remember too...that some more competitive schools (Ivies and such) actually REJECT more vals and sals than they accept (with a 10% acceptance rate, that is not hard to believe).</p>

<p>
[quote]
The fact is, things have changed (obviously) and students are more open to sharing this information.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Times have changed indeed, but, if anything, times have changed in the opposite direction. When I was a little kid in grade school, the teachers hung outstanding test papers (with grades marked on them) on the wall. We just accepted such public disclosure as normal and natural. I don't see that in the elementary schools anymore. (I assume it would be a FERPA violation.)</p>

<p>I know some outstanding students who are not comfortable sharing their grades, because it might make other students who are struggling feel bad. When they are asked how they did on a test, they tend to evade answering. Some people draw the wrong conclusions from their evasiveness and assume they must have done poorly. Of course, such a student would never dream of asking another student her grades.</p>

<p>So not all students these days are open to sharing. I admire their sensitivity to other people's feelings, and the fact that they have better things to do than to keep track of other students' grades.</p>

<p>EDIT: It's interesting to note that there are colleges that explicitly support these kinds of students in their values. (E.g. see post #4 in the link below.)</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?p=3676829#post3676829%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?p=3676829#post3676829&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>"It's the person's choice to tell you the information, it's not like I or the OP or her daughter was beating it out of them. </p>

<p>That is high school in the 21st century. Interesting eh?"</p>

<p>This also was high school back in my day for the students who were the most competitive and who were vying for things like val and sal. There are some people who have competitive natures and want to win at everything. [I'm not putting them down. I'm just describing a personality characteristic.]</p>

<p>There are others like my S who don't pay any attention to things like that. </p>

<p>I do think that now the val and sal and class rank designations may be more important than they were in many of our high school days because some colleges give scholarships or automatic acceptances to students with certain ranks. I don't remember there being things like that when I was young.</p>

<p>This thread makes me glad my kids went to boarding school where none of this was an issue in the slightest.</p>

<p>This is one competition I have never encouraged my kids to get involved in. At their school, to be a val requires strategies that go beyond the pale. Like posters have said before, avoiding certain teachers, taking classes "off the books", going crazy over 98's and 99's, doing all extra credit, even when unnecessary, arguing over answers with the teacher to get them changed, not taking performing arts. There was a thread about this a year ago- I got flamed for saying it, but it's the twooth. There's something unhealthy about the way kids at our school obsess over grades. It's no longer about who is smart and on the ball. It's about who is neurotically focused on grades/classes/teachers/playing the game. One mother said her son was physically sick over a test he took that he took, and he ended up with a 100 on it!! He was sick over it (before he found out his grade) because he was so afraid he MIGHT have missed a question! Whassup with that?</p>

<p>Maybe our school is different. In the past couple years, the vals have been students who don't do anything sporty or artsy on the side. Anyway, there are a lot of ways to compete, why put yourself or you kids through this????</p>

<p>My bro-in-law was his h.s. val "back in the day", achieved effortlessly (well, you have to know the rest of the school to imagine it).</p>

<p>All the commotion was so ridiculous to him that he quietly told the Sal to prepare the speech, and he boycotted his own graduation.</p>

<p>P.S. Everybody lived, even my mother-in-law.</p>

<p>In those days, being a Val and having 25 cents bought you a hamburger.</p>

<p>P.S. Everybody lived, even my mother-in-law.</p>

<p>;)</p>

<p>Eh. I just don't get all the consternation focused on schools that rank--I have read more than one college advice book written by former adcoms that stated their support for weighted, exact class rank for most HS's. There isn't cutthroat competition in my school for Val--no one's killing anyone, no one's friendships are hurt over it. It might not be a huggy, touchy feely way to do things, but it accomplishes it's goal--it shows how well each student has done, gradewise, in comparison to the other students, taking courseload into account. After that, it's up to the colleges to decide how they want to use it. Here are my school's rules:
1. Based on 7 classes a semester, for 7 semesters of HS
2. Because Honors and AP classes are the same level, any class with this distinction is given 1 more grade point. (An A = 5 grade points).
3. Val/Sal is determined by the TOTAL number of grade points. Thus, a student who took 4 weighted, 3 unweighted classes every semester for 7 semesters and got straight A's would have 224 grade points ((4<em>5)(3</em>4)7 = 224). A person who had 223 grade points would be ranked next.
4. The rest of the list is ranked by weighted GPA</p>

<p>People talk about their grades. People talk, when the list becomes available, about their class rank. The Val is not always or even usually the most intelligent/academic student. But the class rank does what it claims, and I am happy to have. If it were to be done away with, it would be tougher--not impossible, but tougher--to truly evaluate a student's GPA. My unweighted GPA is a 3.82, which some people have balked at as low--it's certainly not the 4.0 that some schools seem to have in droves. Yet, my weighted class rank qualifies me for the top 2%--not as low as the 3.82 might have seen (even unweighted rank is top 3-4% for my HS). I just don't buy the "too competitive" talk--that cutthroat attitude isn't born, it's made, and not by the ranking system either, I'd bet.</p>

<p>D's school's val method (no sal):</p>

<p>1) GPA 4.325 or better
2) No grade lower than A-</p>

<p>Sounds good, but several top kids (including D) have been excluded due to a B. So there are vals with a lower GPA than some who are not val. The whole point of weighting is to make sure the students who do the best in the most rigorous schedule of courses are ranked accordingly. Yet this method honors those with lower ranks. The other problem is that kids will drop classes at the last drop date if they are getting a B, simply to maintain val status (D's friends parents actually made her do that). On top of that, school "doesn't rank" (so they tell colleges) --- whatever. </p>

<p>To be honest, it doesn't matter unless there is a scholarship involved (like the MSU full tuition for #1 in class). It does bug D that some with lower GPAs will be honored at graduation, but she knows it is not that big a deal (plus, two of the brightest kids in class are in the same boat). Once graduation is over, no one cares!!!</p>

<p>Again, I'm the OP. Re: the grade thing, my daughter is good friends with the 1 and 2 and they openly discuss grades - they're friends and cohorts. #1 (I don't want to use names obviously, but the numbers do sound cold...!) calls my D all the time for help with difficult homework. In her school, most of the honors kids have been in many, many classes over the 4 years and they are truly attached to each other. I can say that while they are all out to do their best, they are not competitive in a bad way - they support each other.</p>

<p>These numbers obviously meant $$. Whether we can resolve this or not simply remains to be seen and determined. We ARE rule followers - that's probably why I'm upset - I hate to rock the boat anywhere. </p>

<p>I will talk with her counselor next week and see if they can help us call the college or write a note describing D's situation. Quite honestly, when D talked to the counselor yesterday, even she was a bit stumped and had to call in someone else to explain - another reason why I don't have complete confidence in this decision/outcome.</p>

<p>Also, we did not go down this HS road, with the intent to natch that #1 spot. She has gone to learn, enjoy school socially, and to do her personal best - mission accomplished!</p>

<p>But the next step is college and $$ are an obstacle. So looking at the next chapter we hope she can land in a spot that is a good fit for her.</p>

<p>our school doesn't officially rank.... But if it did, our gpa calculation is weighted, but only weighted by UC-approved honors/AP courses. So if we did have a official val/sal, Honors Band (or Honors Frosh English) would not receive a gpa weight boost regardless of the difficulty of the curriculum. since they are not UC-approved honors courses.</p>

<p>Not every high school has kids comparing grades. My son, who can't even remember his own class rank, (7 out of 642), never knows anyones grades or scores. Though everyone pretty much knew who would be val. He had top grades in middle school too, and is the only kid I know who cares enough to make a point of being the best. </p>

<p>Having no ranks doesn't necessarily make things more relaxed. My high school didn't rank, but we managed to spend much of senior year worrying about grades and scores and who would get into which college. I think it's more a factor of putting too many anxious girls together in one pressure cooker.</p>

<p>On my school district's task force, we came to three findings after months of research:</p>

<p>Class rank tends to:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Reduce the number of our students who are admitted to their first-choice schools</p></li>
<li><p>Cost at least several hundred thousand, and perhaps millions of dollars in lost merit scholarship money</p></li>
<li><p>Drive gaming behaviors that negatively affect many students' educational experiences.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>If our school district was not high-performing, we would not have come to these conclusions.</p>

<p>Tarhunt: I like your school district. Could you elaborate point #2? Thanks.</p>

<p>Point #2:</p>

<p>There are still many merit scholarships out there that have class rank cutoff points. In a high-performing school district, a talented, hard-working kid might miss that cutoff point, her only fault being the fact that half the top 10% were NMSFs.</p>

<p>We called a random sampling of schools with class rank cutoff points for merit aid and found, for the most part (95% fo them) that, in the absence of class rank data, they would disregard that issue and go with other factors. It was hard to get a complete handle on what it was costing us, since it depended on assumptions about how many kids would attend certain schools if a merit scholarship were offered and how many would actually receive a scholarship. But it was clear that the dollars must clearly be in the hundreds of thousands.</p>