<p>At my HS, the method of selection was among the most fair that I've heard of. At the end of 31/32 quarters of our HS career, the people with the highest two GPAs were selected. It was as simple as that. All this hippie feel good stuff I've heard of on this board is ridiculous - val and sal are irrelevant but formal positions. Kids who jockey for them should be boiled alive. Or something. Same for the parents who worry about such irrelevant things. I was the valedictorian of my class, and it hasn't changed my life in any way. I was still dinged at my top choice. And when I got to college, I was back at square one (academically) just like everyone else. I would trade the position in a heartbeat to have gotten into Princeton. But no, it wasn't meant to be. Oh well.</p>
<p>1moremom: Thanks for taking the time to reply. I am sure in time, I will be less irate as well. Fortunately, this is a private school, so I do have recourse in terms of reduced future contributions (or none as long as I am still angry!). I appreciate everyone sharing their stories and knowing my son is not alone. Sometimes you have to question these school authorities and the messages they send. When you have a couple of kids separated by hundreths of a point after 4 years, is there any difference? My son is an extremely bright young man and he will do fine. However, I can't stop to wonder if this had anything with his last minute decision not to attend a Catholic college.</p>
<p>Cavalier, it is not always irrelevant; often there are substantial amounts of money involved. Our district offers a nice scholarship to the valedictorian. I believe Texas offers its valedictorians tuition scholarships to the state schools. My son did not jockey for class rank, but took the classes that most interested and challenged him and then worked his hardest. It is some consolation knowing that, while the U classes prevented him from being named the valedictorian, they probably helped him get into his first choice school.</p>
<p>cavalier302</p>
<p>I agree that the val/sal designation may seem irrelevant, with one major exception.</p>
<p>A number of schools, as well as a number of other private scholarship organizations, give grants specifically to valedictorians.</p>
<p>1moremom, getting into the top choice school is all that matters, in my opinion.</p>
<p>SBDad, mine did, too. When I gave my speech at graduation, my principal handed me a check for $500. Big deal, it was only money.</p>
<p>Sorry if I was not clear, I was talking about money fromt the university, not from the high school.</p>
<p>Ohhh, I see. I've only heard of a few state schools giving money to valedictorians.</p>
<p>Regardless, I think the titles of valedictorian and salutatorian should only be given to the top two ranked graduates in a class. There should be no other redefinitions of the term.</p>
<p>If our GPA system weren't flawed, I'd have no problem with naming val. and sal. But when you can earn an A in pottery and that A is worth more than an A- in Honors College Physics, it bothers me. Still, if you're going to name just one Val. and Sal., then I agree there ought to be some recognition as well for the top 10 or 20 students. The college system of summa, magna, and cum laude distinctions appeals to me also.</p>
<p>Daughter's school maintains weighted and unweighted class rank. Students submit an essay on why they want to speak at Graduation and administration chooses.</p>
<p>cavalier, if you read closely most people are upset about how they rank. Are GPAs weighted, what about the kids that took high school level courses in junior high, those sorts of things. Most people don't mid ranking/val/sal they mind how those people are picked. Heck this has been happening for 30 years. Heck back in the dark ages our sal took home ec and non college prep English didn't finish college and never worked a day in her life, while our #4 took Trig and Physics and is a neuro surgeon...this has been going on for a looong time.</p>
<p>TheGFG, my school had a full point of weight for AP classes and got gifted&talented classes. Oh, and about recognition for more students - every year, the top 30 were recognized both in the school paper and at a dinner called the "Top 30 dinner." The top 30 also received their diplomas first, I believe.</p>
<p>One of the problems of using a 4.0 (or even 5.0) scale, is that it closes the gap between the top students (thus the need to grasp at straws and round to the nearer hundreth or even thousandth of a point). If you use a 100 point scale, it will be a lot clearer who is 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.</p>
<p>"Yes, he probably should not have taken orchestra and band since they are not ranked courses."</p>
<p>That's one way to look at it. The other way to look at it is that he should definitely have taken those courses if he has an interest in instrumental music, and the heck with class rank.</p>
<p>One of the problems with weighted GPAs is that their existence may discourage some students from taking classes in subjects they truly love simply because honors versions of those courses are not available.</p>
<p>Both of my kids took several non-honors courses in high school because they actually wanted to learn something about those subjects, even though it would hurt their weighted GPAs. If you asked each of them "What was the best course you took in high school?" one would rave about a non-honors music theory course, and the other would rave about a non-honors tech ed course. These courses were highlights of high school for them, even though their weighted GPAs suffered as a result. They have no regrets, and neither do I.</p>
<p>Our flagship state u (USNWR Top 40) offers full tuition to all state vals. At the local public HS, there are hard feelings every year among top students who miss out on this award by an eyelash.</p>
<p>I like the commencement speaker policy, though. Any student is welcome to compete for the chance to deliver the commencement address. A panel of teachers, students and parents select the speaker. Brilliant students may not necessarily be brilliant speakers, so why not offer everyone a chance?</p>
<p>The result: top students are recognized for their achievements by a school administrator during the ceremony, and the keynote speech is usually quite entertaining. Seems like a win-win situation to me.</p>
<p>Our school recognizes the top 5% weighted and unweighted to avoid the problems and hard feelings noted above. Our state does not reward Vals so they were able to go to this system which I think works pretty well and keeps gaming the system down to a dull roar.</p>
<p>Beginning several years ago, our HS claimed to not rank. This has been very confusing to parents and students alike. Obviously, since we have a Val and Sal, they do rank at the top, and they do give out at least percentile ranks to colleges which require it on applications. The main reason given for the decision was to avoid discouraging students from trying difficult material due to worries about their grades being affected (a total failure of policy in this regard, since grades in isolation as well as part of a GPA do matter quite a bit and are still taken into consideration by students), and to prevent colleges from making discriminations among students based on rank, when in reality the point difference between them might be minute.</p>
<p>So when a friend of mine called one of the state schools to learn the reason behind her son's rejection there, she was surprised and angered to learn that the reason was his class rank.</p>
<p>My Ds school does not rank, and the val-sal is not made a big deal of, instead, the staff votes on a boy and a girl who have great grades, but also show values, morals, school spirit, service, exemplyfing the mission of the school</p>
<p>that position is held in much higher esteem than the val and sal, who often are kids who just get the grades, and don't participate as much in the school (at this school anyway)</p>
<p>the school does not rank, and the colleges don't seem to mind, but what does irk me, is that our school requires for years of "religion" from world religions, to philosophy to social justice, to studying the bible...and some of the classes are very tough, but some schools drop those courses from the averages, and because of this requirement, another class can't be taken...the classes themselves are very good, and the students do learn, but to just trash it is unfiar....many do count the class, but many of the HUGE schools do not</p>
<p>My guess is that the ValSal label will mean less and less as more schools change the way it is determined who gets it, with schools having 20 vals do you think colleges will go, gee, lets give the ALL money...on the other hand, colleges can say, well we have 20 vals in our freshman class, aren;t we great!!!</p>
<p>and with different ways classes are weighted from school to school, I do think the colleges will shift some as well as the HS, and I think the val-sal label will be less and less important</p>
<p>imo</p>
<p>Our HS did it in a way that resulted in NO conflict.</p>
<p>Valedictorian is the speech giver chosen by the senior class after hearing a half dozen kids give sample speeches.</p>
<p>Grades are by actual percentage, 91, 93, 98, etc. Only academic classes are counted, your fine arts and sports can be done as often as you like, they have no affect on GPA.</p>
<p>For college apps, they ony rank based on grade 11 marks. Even though a kid could take all "esy" classes v the AP track, the best & brightest are taking the toughest classes and getting the highest marks in them. When you have the exact percentage grade then your A & my A are not the same and with 6 classes counted, it seems to come out pretty clearly.</p>
<p>Our old HS had all the negative energy, working the system, and playing games which I read about here, but this HS and their way of calculating rank results in no big energy at all. It is wonderful, kids concentrate on their classes not on gaming the numbers.</p>
<p>We all come from different perspectives even though we are all parents of (or) high achieving kids. </p>
<p>I can assure you that had my D not been named Val , I would have suggested it was because she had taken courses years early and with different and lower grading teachers, and she was unable because of scheduling to take one advanced class she wanted to take (if the circumstances were different). It wouldn't have been fair. </p>
<p>The youngster in the sal spot can say that if he had not skipped a math course by taking it in the summer he would be val and the fact that a dual credit course taken off site was weighted not as highly as it would have been if taken on site. It wasn't fair.</p>
<p>Number three can argue that his GPA was higher than 2 of the 3 immediately preceding vals, and he just had the bad luck to be behind these two. It wasn't fair in a historical perspective (I think the 4th highest GPA in 4 years is third in this class. Doesn't that suck?). </p>
<p>It will never be "fair" in an absolute sense but it can be "more fair". Continue to try to remove the inconsistencies, the fallacies, the idiocies of the situation but realize that whatever you do, it still won't be truly "fair".</p>
<p>As long as colleges value rank we should rank in the fairest way possible. To ignore rank is to have blinders on. The colleges use whatever ranking data is submitted to them and all schools submit something that lets the college know where the kid stands (whether it be #1 or top decile or quartile or just pulled from the transcript and compared to a grade breakdown on the school profile).</p>