The past 4 valedictorians at my school have been accepted to Harvard. None of their extracurriculars have been THAT outstanding, but they all have had amazing grades and standardized test scores. Is this just a coincidence. I have heard that Harvard sometimes looks at particular schools, but I go to a public school, it is not very special. I was just wondering if there was any explanation as to how they keep getting accepted when none of them have done anything outstanding?
Are you privy to the details of their apps?
@bodangles I do not know the details of al of their essays. I know one wrote about a personal struggle with her parents. I know that none of them won any awards further than the school-level. And I know which classes each individual took (one took 10 APs total (9 5s, 1 4), one took 9 APs total (not sure of her scores, I know there was one 3), and one took 11 APs total (10 5s, 1 4)).
@bodangles was being too subtle. 
The point is, you have no idea (nor do we) what these students’ completed applications looked like. Harvard chose them for a reason, which is, IMO, not because they were valedictorians. But for whatever reason they were chosen has no impact on you.
Anyway, your question is unanswerable in this forum. Additionally, past admissions results is no indication of future outcomes. Your time spent analyzing other student’s applications is time wasted; focus on your own application instead.
FWIW: As acceptance rates have dropped, Harvard has changed the statistics they release when announcing each new class of admits. Admissions USED TO announce the number of valedictorians applying in each year’s applicant pool, but they longer seem to do so. For example, this from the class of 2016: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/03/2032-admitted-to-class-of-16/
Note that in 2016, the number of valedictorians applying (3800) vastly EXCEEDED the number of admitted students (2032), so being a valedictorian does NOT guarantee acceptance. As such. prospective students shouldn’t waste their time focussing on such things as: (1) each year, Harvard probably has more valedictorians applying than they have slots in their freshman class, and (2) Not every accepted student is a valedictorian. So just because something happened at your high school in years past, does not make it so this year.
^ good point.
OP, don’t need awards and you.likely don’t know what makes a great EC. You could read up on how H views all this.
another thing…every high school has different definitions for valedictorian. One private high school I know picks ONE only with the highest weighted GPA. Another public school down the road has tons of valedictorians - all above a certain GPA are Vals. There is no way it is just that they are Valedictorians. BTW our Val did not get into hardly any great schools. I am sure they had the hard criteria =- gpa, test scores…but who knows, maybe their essays and recs were sub par. Don’t focus on Valedictorian.