<p>i'll only have taken around 7 ap classes...maybe 2-4 ap tests by the end of my senior year...but I'm most likely gonna be valedictorian...I don't do any self-study crap</p>
<p>oh yea, in my school, electives that hurt your GPA because they are not honors/ap level do not get factored in</p>
<p>another thing...valedictorian does not give the speech at graduation, extremely weird</p>
<p>Mm at my old high school, the valedectorian got to be so by taking lots of weighted classes, which are more academically challenging, so they did do the work for the position. Now my school doesn't do rank/GPA, which has eliminated a lot of the fuss and annoying useless competition.</p>
<p>In our school, regular classes are worth 4.0 and honors and AP classes are worth 5.0. The valedictorian and the next 3 "top people" played the system. Health and world history are required non-honors courses. They postponed these courses to second semester senior year. (The valedictorian spot is determined at the end of 1st semester senior year.) Physics I is a non-honors course. They did not take it. They were unable to take AP Physics, (Physics I is the pre-req) but they didn't care. Taking college classes has a penalty associated with it. The course does not count as an honors class - only a regular one. So at our school, college calculus is worth the same as foods I or basic math.</p>
<p>Our school weighs the honors and AP classes more and bases class rank off that weighted number. Additionally, once you hit a certain level (after 7 honors/AP courses), you "max out" and can't get any higher. As a result, we sometimes have people tied for 1st. Our school also doesn't do valedictorian, but everybody always knows who it is anyway.</p>
<p>Our school's system of grading, in my opinion, is the best way to find a single individual for the distinction of Val...</p>
<p>GPA is based on the 5 core classes: Math, Science, Social Studies, English, and a foreign language</p>
<p>Our ranking system is based on a 5.0 scale.</p>
<p>AP/Honors receive a 1.0 boost in WEIGHTED GPA (I.e. an A in an AP class = 6.0)</p>
<p>Rank is determined by your WEIGHTED GPA, although your college will see your UW GPA.</p>
<p>It really annoys me that I will probably miss beign valedictorian b/c the accelerated classes I took in eight grade counted for my GPA, something that my family did not know. Therefore, my parents did not push me, and I only had about a 95 average that year. </p>
<p>Also, it really annoys me that the girl who will probably be our valedictorian is one of the biggest teacher's pets ever. She buys presents for every teacher at Christmas time, and then cries when she doesn't do well on tests, in order to get a retake. However, I'm still waiting on grades for this final quarter; I may be able to sneak by her. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.</p>
<p>There was a high school in Washington like one or two years ago that had 44 valedictorians...haha</p>
<p>Here is the link for the Washington Post article.
41 students that were valedictorians at that school.</p>
<p>no one can compete with our school's valedictorian. he's ranked top 20 in chemistry, math, and physics in the nation. therefore, there is MAD competition for salutatorian. which i'm missing only b/c my mom suggested i take summer school to get rid of my arts credits. this brought me down so i'm out of the running for salutatorian. oh well.</p>
<p>my school is trying to do what that school that foggy posted up did.</p>
<p>Meh, I stopped caring way back when. I took drama and art classes which brought down my GPA. Summer school classes also brought that down.</p>
<p>Our school weighs GPAs but our class val, who moved here from Malaysia last summer, only has a year's worth of grades. Hence, her GPA is 4.5 as opposed to everyone else's...my friend should be val but she was here frosh and soph year as well and had to take the beginning classes that weren't honors or AP, PE, health, drivers ed, etc. Basically, if you move here from another school that had more honors or AP courses, you'd get weighted points here as well and would therefore beat out anyone who had been here since 9th grade.</p>
<p>Oh, btw...It's strange...valedictorians don't speak at our graduations either. Whoever wants to be a performer or speaker at graduation must audition before a panel and then the panel chooses who will perform or speak at the commencement ceremony. I can understand this, especially if one of the couple valedictorians doesn't wish to speak, but I still feel a little cheated. I, personally, want to hear from the valedictorian at graduation, not just someone who saw speaking at graduation as their last little bow and happen to have mediocre speaking skills.</p>
<p>Valedictorian-ship is purely based on your grade average. And in my opinion, grades suck because they only determine how well you fit into the prescribed mold of your particular high school. They dont test intelligence; they test familiarity.</p>
<p>Yeah, our val and sal were so far out that nobody really bothered to reach them (like .2 ahead of everyone else, while i was in third never able to catch up, oh well)</p>
<p>As far as I know, our school doesn't rank students, so I have no idea who the valedictorian for my grade was. My school also doesn't give extra weight to AP/honors classes when calculating GPA (which is on a 4.0 scale). </p>
<p>I actually prefer not having a weighted GPA. I talked to the college counselor at my school about this, and he said that generally, people who take the easiest classes they can find generally get around a 3.6 GPA. The people who take the harder classes, the people who are motivated enough to take the AP/honors classes, are the ones with the 4.0s (although of course not everyone who takes an AP/honors course has a really high GPA). I don't know if my school is just unusual or what, but it seems to work out that the motivated kids are the ones who take the AP classes anyway, and thus are the ones with the really high GPAs. Also, as some people have mentioned, weighted GPAs discourage people from taking classes that they really like, like art or music electives. And don't lots of colleges recalculate your GPA to make it unweighted when they're making their decisions?</p>
<p>I kinda find the attitude that you have to win high school to be distasteful.</p>
<p>We had like 20 valedictorians (more than any other school in the district and also more than ever)</p>
<p>Our district has really good schools but the worst one (better at athletics though) had a valedictorian who had a speech about disney characters for 10 minutes. I was like "how did she became a valedictorian?"</p>
<p>We had more entertaining ones at my school. my school's on a hill so halls go up and down... somebody talked about going down the main hall on a tv cart... it was actually related to something.</p>
<p>And the best quote "Thinking about us growing up and having kids scares me more than going hunting with Dick Chaney.." What was worst was my friend's freshman sister asked "Who's Dick Chaney?" </p>
<p>Our valedictorians are the ppl who just got all A's though, so it can be anybody really... Math screwed up my chance to be one long ago.. cough</p>
<p>At my school, a very small one at that (110 in class) we had no APs, only a few honors. In order to get ahead, I took about 5 AP classes online and few extra online honors courses so that boosted my GPA a ton, later..the then val sued the school board and my weighted average was revoked because the classes were not offered at traditional school...so there ya go. I could care less, I ended up 6th and val was no big deal to me</p>
<p>I hate this whole valedictorian thing. I am going to miss out because I took a second language while another kid to a study hall. The study hall does not affect GPA so my second language brings mine down.</p>
<p>At my school it was always a race for val. Usually 2 people are tied going into senior year and the val is picked half way through the year because one of them almost always drops an AP class the other is taking. After those 2 the next 3 or so also take tons of APs and do well in all of them. The rest of the top ten take maybe one AP class in all of high school.</p>
<p>The issue with the val. taking easy classes has to do with whether your school weighs GPAs for harder classes. My high school weighs on a six point scale so the harder the class, i.e. honors or AP, the higher your GPA. The valedictorian this year ended up with a 5.28 GPA, anything below a 5.0 at my school probably wouldn't have even broken the top 5% of the class. And almost everyone in the top 5% have taken at least 4 or 5 AP classes if not more. I don't entirely agree with this system, but it does keep the valedictoring from being the one who took the easiest classes.</p>
<p>At our school rather than averaging in a 5 or whatever for an A in an AP class, they add a small fraction onto the top (I think it's about .05), so getting more A's in electives doesn't bring down your average--the AP boosts are added on after the grade is averaged.</p>