<p>Just to throw another consideration into the Dartmouth numbers: Many of the schools that name a salutatorian have 1 valedictorian and 1 salutatorian. Some of the local schools name only valedictorians–but our school had 8 of them. On CC I have heard of schools with as many as 40 “valedictorians.” So there may be more valedictorians than salutatorians applying to Dartmouth.</p>
<p>It seems possible that Dartmouth might prefer an untied #2 to one of 40 tied for #1. So their acceptance rate for salutatorians might actually be higher than the acceptance rate for valedictorians. Wouldn’t mean that they prefer a salutatorian to a valedictorian, other things being equal.</p>
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That makes sense.</p>
<p>I also suspect that at a large school like ours the kids who end up at Dartmouth, while in the top 5%, probably aren’t the Vals. Nothing against Dartmouth! While at a smaller school, especially one that has fewer students historically applying to very selective colleges, the top student is more likely to end up at Dartmouth. BTW the average SAT score does not necessarily say what you think about the quality of the classes. The average SAT at our school is around 1500, but there’s a big group of top students with 2000+ scores.</p>
<p>I don’t know what the average SAT score is in our school. I suspect it’s very low. The kids who get above 1800 will enter a “club” so they get free tickets to school games, etc. So it’s clear that if one gets above 1800 s/he is considered a good student in the school. The students who are in the same position as my daughter don’t do well in SAT or SAT subjects. (They do Okay but can’t compare with good students in other schools.) I also doubt they have high expectations in terms of college interests. Even if D. doesn’t end up being a val, she will probably be the only one who is interested in any school that we are talking about here, provided she gets decent SAT scores in her junior year.</p>
<p>The Dartmouth stats- not that they don’t tell anything, but that they don’t tell enough. With holistic, when you see admit stats or a freshman profile, it’s after all the culling, all the rest of what makes a kid seem right.</p>
<p>The 1900 val kid in an underesourced hs: if that kid chose rigor, got nearly all A’s, high AP scores, had significant responsibilities in the hs and outside, has strong LoRs, essays, etc, he can be very attractive. When the bulk of the student body underperforms, doesn’t head off to 4 year college, etc, he can stand out on his own. </p>
<p>The lower ranked kid at a competitive hs: assuming his app is identical, what bump does it give him that the hs average score is 2000? All that tells you is that many kids do very well in the tests. Even if you say he had 2300, the lower rank can suggest he was outperformed. </p>
<p>I don’t think we can understand the sal admit numbers without more info.</p>
<p>QM- I’ve seen apps where the whole top 25% of the class was “val.”</p>
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<p>One strategy is to take both the SAT and ACT in late junior year, since they are different tests, and some students do better on one than the other. If desired, study for and retake the initially higher one in senior year.</p>
<p>It would be interesting to see acceptance stats for applicants with both #1 rank and a perfect SAT or ACT score. It stands to reason that lots of vals might have relatively poor standardized test scores and that lots of perfect scorers were not especially motivated to do well in high school because they were bored. If we were given stats on those who topped out in both, we would be able to get a better sense of how much weight is given overall to the “extras” – ECs, community service, essays and letters of recommendation.</p>
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<p>How so? Seems to me that to get to be val you have to be very good at taking tests in a lot different subjects and keep being good at it year after year. It’s not that big of leap to think that such excellent test-takers could also turn their talents in the direction of standardized tests.</p>
<p>And, although I realize this is not a scientifically-collected sample, threads by CC members of where their vals and sals went to college show that most go to selective colleges - schools where they will need to have very good SAT/ACTs in addition to their sparkling grades to get in:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/high-school-life/705905-where-valedictorian-your-school-going-next-year.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/high-school-life/705905-where-valedictorian-your-school-going-next-year.html</a></p>
<p>It depends on the school. If a school doesn’t weight grades (common in my day), it would not be unusual for the straight-A Val to be somebody that did not delve into rigorous AP classes.</p>
<p>DS’s hs had a Val and an IB-Val. That was because IB (with pre-IB/4.5 As) gave opportunity for higher GPA than AP coursework.</p>
<p>Similar to post #52 for Dartmouth, here are the stats for S’s class of 2015 at Georgetown. Based on the class profile information that I kept, over 40% of their entering class were #1, #2 or #3 in their HS classes. S was a coval (1 of 3). They make a point of these stats each year at the new class convocation so in this case, being a val definately helps one’s chances of getting admitted.</p>
<p>The breakdown is below:</p>
<h1>1 1,370 or 2,365 accepted for 58%</h1>
<h1>2 393 of 1,211 accepted for 32%</h1>
<h1>3 286 of 916 accepted for 31%</h1>
<p>Top 5% 954 of 5,239 accepted for 18%
2nd 5% 301 of 3,598 accepted for 8%
Overall - 2,479 of 19,225 accepted for 18% admit rate</p>
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<p>That’s a good strategy. We talked about it. She decided to take the SAT in October of her junior year, around the time she takes her PSAT. Don’t know anything about ACT though.</p>
<p>It’s not easy to be a val in strong schools that offer lots of AP classes for GPA race.
Kids in my area will not be able to stay on top 5 or 10 percent of class if they take easy classes. To be val they must take at least 1 AP class in 9th grade and 7 classes per year. It’s insane but that’s how it goes in many public schools.</p>
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<p>22 APs in high school IS TRULY insane. Does it matter what scores they get in national exams?</p>
<p>7 classes per year including required non AP classes they don’t wish to take. Vals need about 13-15 AP classes. They do pretty well on national scores. Most vals, sals go to HYPSM.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I have seen 2 students in my kids’ school who scored 2400 SAT in single sitting but did not get to the schools they wanted. The kids’ names were published in school district website before they applied to colleges.</p>
<p>How does one do 13 to 15 AP classes?</p>
<p>I guess they just do it. For the vals and sals it’s not a big deal. They also carry 2-4 college classes in local colleges or on online schools like Stanford EPGY. It’s probably a big deal for people who want to catch up with them.</p>
<p>Our school sends a lot of kids to top schools, and none of them have taken anywhere near that amount of APs.</p>
<p>My oldest could have done 13 APs. (He actually did 8 or 9 if you count BC as 2 or 10 if you count Physics C as two.) He didn’t take AP Physics B because of a schedule conflict with Latin. He didn’t take the two AP English courses, and he didn’t take AP World because it wasn’t offered in our school yet. He took an extra non-AP science course senior year instead of AP Euro or any of the other APs our school offers (AP Environ, AP music, AP art for example). He started Algebra in 7th grade, and took regular Chem as a summer school course in 3 weeks via CTY. He taught himself comp sci on his own time in middle school.</p>
<p>What he actually took:
9th: AP Comp Sci
10th: AP bio
11th: AP Chem, AP Calc BC, APUSH
12th: AP Physics C, AP Latin, AP Economics</p>
<p>That said, I feel sorry for kids who feel forced to take so many APs. My son really, really enjoyed not taking AP English. He took electives senior year and enjoyed them much more than he’d enjoyed any of his honors English classes. I got the impression that he was on the high end for his class in terms of number of APs taken, but I don’t actually know for sure.</p>
<p>Maxwellequations - I suggest that you let your daughter decide. Our son took Music classes (unweighted) and every Phy Ed class (unweighted) that he could fit into his schedule. He took lots of APs, was an AP Scholar with Distinction, and had strong ACT and SAT scores. Was he Valedictorian? No. Was he Salutatorian? No. Was he happy? Yes. And he had several great colleges to choose from in April.</p>