<p>68 this year!!! I read in the NYTimes article that the vals at one school performed a ten-minute skit. I was thinking that next year the vals at our school could perform an opera piece for 20 minutes where everyone could sing about their accomplishments at the same time in a harmonious way!</p>
<p>^^Yorky, what was the classs size? That is unbelieveable naming 68…was that the top 10%? They didn’t all speak did they??</p>
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How do they get above 4.0 unweighted? Are there A+ grades?</p>
<p>95 out of a class of 772! We had one Scholar of Scholars with a GPA of 4.8 (highest cumulative GPA) and he was the only one who got to speak at graduation.</p>
<p>"Yorky, what was the classs size? That is unbelieveable naming 68…was that the top 10%? They didn’t all speak did they?? "</p>
<p>Momof3boys,
68 vals out of a class of about 490! They did not speak; the class president spoke, instead.
Pretty silly, huh! (I think my opera idea is a great one, though)</p>
<p>I agree with the singing. That’s quite crazy. 68 out of 490 means that more than 10% of the graduating class were named vals. No wonder they had the class pres speak. Actually that’s what happened in our district. Top 10% are named senior scholars and the class pres speaks.</p>
<p>Scholar of Scholars – there’s a new term. Scholar of Scholars. Goodness.</p>
<p>Hahaha… Yeah, I know. It’s a So Cal thing. It’s basically the valedictorian but since there are so many of those, they had to come up with a new term. haha :-)</p>
<p>We had one…BUT because the school gives extra points for an A in an AP class, being valedictorian means that that person takes maybe one more AP class than the other straight A students, and it can be one of the ‘easy AP’ classes, like Geography or Art History. It also means that the valedictorian didn’t do any of the things that just get an A rather than an A with extra AP points. So the valedictorian did no drama, band, sports teams, choir, etc. etc.</p>
<p>It’s a game. And pretty meaningless in the big scheme of things.</p>
<p>“it’s a game. And pretty meaningless in the big scheme of things.”</p>
<p>At our school it’s not a game. The top students are very involved in all aspects of HS life, including the val and sal. It’s not a honor anyone strives for any more than any other HS honor. </p>
<p>“How do they get above 4.0 unweighted? Are there A+ grades?”</p>
<p>Probably 20% of our students have above a 4.0. Honors classes are on a 5.0 scale and AP classes on a 6.0. Plus grades (96 and above) are the only ones to get full credit.</p>
<p>^^^ Same at our school. The Scholar of Scholars was a very talented and recruited athlete who participated in CSF, NHS amd Mu Alpha Theta while taking the most difficult curriculum available. The entire top 10 of the class was very, very talented and it was no game.</p>
<p>Love .</p>
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<p>Same at our school. The top students do not “game the system” and are almost always very active in EC’s. The AP’s are weighted, but these students still take the non-weighted classes such as band,journalism, chorus, art, etc.</p>
<p>We’ve never had more than 1, using a 100 weighted scale. Sometimes the score difference between #1 and #2 is pretty insignificant though - maybe something as dumb as there is no honors section of Latin 2, but there is for Spanish.</p>
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<p>Excellent question - I took (copy and pasted) the criteria right from district announcement. I don’t know.</p>
<p>None. No vals, no sals, no ranking. And it does not mean anything anyhow. Colleges determine ranking based on kid’s GPA and HS class profile. The rest is very irrelevant.</p>
<p>1 Val and 4 tied for Sal. Lots of speeches!</p>
<p>Our school does not even have a val or sal (essentially…). Instead, when the students graduate, there is a marking next to their name on the pamphlet indicating top 5%, 10%, etc… I believe it is very similar in our entire school district/area.</p>
<p>At our kids’ schools, no ranking. Students compete with themselves, and how one does relative to others is not important or relevant. They get their reward after highschool (and most do very well in that regard). And it’s one less pointless source of stress they do not to worry about.</p>
<p>^they still need to worry about it very much. As I mentioned before, colleges determine ranking anyway and some selective programs require certain ranking. it does not matter if classmates know or not each other ranking, but it DOES matter to colleges what the ranking is and they will calculate it.</p>
<p>This is the first year our school isn’t doing vals/sals. The top 5% of the class walked first and they chose (I don’t know how) one of them to speak at graduation. Lame.</p>