As of the end of this school year (Junior year), I have the highest GPA of my class. However, although my school has everybody’s GPA, percentile, etc. in their database, they don’t officially rank everybody, with only the valedictorian and salutatorian of each year being named. Come application time, would my guidance counselor submit my status as valedictorian to colleges, or would I simply be unranked like everybody else?
Only your GC can answer this question - it varies from school to school I imagine. Speaking from my own school’s experience, they would disclose valedictorian and top 20%, otherwise, no mention of standing was made.
If you give a speech as valedictorian, you could mention that in your application at some point, if you are concerned that they won’t know.
^ Except by that time, you will have applied and, hopefully gotten accepted somewhere.
Our local school had 17 valedictorians one year and 22 the next - crazy but true. GC may have written “one of our valedictorians” or “a student in the top 10% or 5%” or just used “a top student” because they didn’t rank either. There are many other things just as important if not more important for them to mention in a rec for you. Valedictorian is nice icing, but not the whole cake. There are soooo many of them.
Talk to your guidance counselor.
Val and sal are not typically named until the end of senior year.
The idea of not ranking is to reduce the stress and the gaming that happens with ranking, so my guess is that they will only rank at end of the year to identify val and sal and have them give speeches. Ask you GC if you can say unoffically val on the app.
Valedictorian at end of junior year is not really a thing is it?
This really depends on the school. I’m in the same boat and I think the school will tell the university, if not, there may be some way to self-report rank. You may have to personally ask your counselor to put it on your transcript.
My daughter was sal at a non-ranking school. And she didn’t know this until May of her senior year. I don’t think the GC really knew either, since she had to wait until senior grades were final to determine who was val and who was sal. So, no, this info never makes into the application. I imagine it’s the same everywhere, unless you’re at a high school that views GPAs as a horse race, with one clear leader the entire way. Even then, the GC will just check the top ten percent box.
But the most important thing to know is that the achievements that lead to being first or second in your class are what the college will evaluate you on. They really don’t care if you were first or eighth in your school.