<p>At my Ds school they have another honer, besides val and sal, it is the student who had the grades, but also showed the most spirit, ie, values, ecs, personallity, leadership, etc and no one has ever complained about who is picked, they may not have the highest GPA, but they represent what the schools goals on educating the whole person</p>
<p>The honor is more valued than the Val or Sal</p>
<p>More valued on applications too? Isn't that sorta just like "Prom Queen" or something?</p>
<p>Vals and Sals at my school are somewhat of a joke. We don't do weighted grades, and the vals are the people with a 4.0 and the sals are the ones with a 3.9999 or something. The average class size at my high school is about 800 kids, so we generally have 20+ vals/sals. It is quite ridiculous. According to our principal, in the graduating class of 2004 over 30% of them had NEVER taken an AP course. </p>
<p>Luckily our system is changing though, so starting with the class of 2008 there won't be any vals/sals, and there will be some sort of an "honors diploma" for kids who've taken a certain amount of credits over the requirement and have taken a certain amount of AP credits.</p>
<p>"That's extremely funny. It's like getting voted for "Most likely to Succeed," which usually ends up with some popular kid that's slightly smarter than the rest of the popular kids."</p>
<p>LMAO.</p>
<p>Nicely said. ...how in the heck can you guys have 5 valedictorians though? </p>
<p>That is extremly rare to have 2 valedictorians at my school because it all comes down to those little points... However, there is 2 salututorian's at times..</p>
<p>And you're exactly right.. I know somebody that got 1 Final B in a class just so she can get ranked 3rd and not have to say a speech at all. Sad, but true... :( </p>
<p>Me on the other hand -- I expect to be salututorian, which isn't all that GREAT, (I wish I could be val)...but you know...at least I get my few minutes of publicity :) I get to speak in front of about 2,500 students/parents!! :0</p>
<p>Didn't realize there were two pages -- but anyways, 20+ VALs!! Are you kidding me?! </p>
<p>For us, the Top 20 get to sit on stage, ...but I've never heard of 20 vals...I doubt those odds can be put into my school...somewhere, somehow, someone will get that final B that will screw them up. o_o</p>
<p>My school is extremely small (graduating class of ~50), so tha val and sal are typically most likely to succeed (otherwise we'd tun out of smart people). </p>
<p>Regarding outside courses, our school has a dual credit program, so they count. This can pose problems because they dilute your AP credits and lower your GPA, even though they are harder than the stardard classes.</p>
<p>The val isn't necesarily the smartest. The sal last year got into MIT and Stanford, while the val <em>I think</em> went to UNR (University of Nevada, Reno) and never had anything intelligent to say. Then all the val's friends complained that admissions weren't fair.... It was actually quite funny.</p>