<p>my school DOES rank, but there isn’t any specific valedictorian. so when i graduate as a senior, there will be a few “#1 ranked” people. there’s no bitterness really because i just go to a public school where 3-4 max get accepted into ivies. (this year, a math whiz got into: MIT, princeton, stanford…and is going to stanford) </p>
<p>however, i do remember this one girl whining how “this one girl with all normal classes is going to graduate #1”. i honestly dont care haha</p>
<p>^^ Intellectualism and fun in learning, I believed that died.</p>
<p>Yes, my school is like this…I am ranked in the 30’s with my 4.22 GPA…why!?</p>
<p>Wow that’s some serious ranking. Our top ranked is at a 4.31 and he’s actually pretty humble about it. Being in the top 10, I really don’t see a “fight” for #1, because no one really wants to give that horrendous speech at graduation. Everyone wants to go to either George Mason or James Madison, which is pretty sad.</p>
<p>I, along with the other top 10, would be happy with UVA. However, UVA has some serious application expectations, and it makes most kids feel sort of inferior.</p>
<p>My school’s not that bad, ranking will probably be 10x worse in college, because that’s when the true gunners come out!</p>
<p>^ You seem like you go to a school similar than mine. Our val has a 4.3 something. And everyone wants to go to GMU or JMU or UVA. What state is your school in?</p>
<p>VA haha, I think NO ONE in any other state would want to go to GMU or JMU.</p>
<p>All VA schools are similar in one way or another:)</p>
<p>Yep, except mine has the painful IB.</p>
<p>Oh wow, IB SUCKS. I feel like it’s way harder than AP. Three brothers before me had to go through it, they absolutely HATED it.</p>
<p>I think that NOVA schools are pretty sweet. They have a bunch of cool activities (Academic Bowl & MUN). Plus, mostly everyone is pretty determined to either go to a good state school or do well enough to get out of VA haha.</p>
<p>lol most stay in state.</p>
<p>Why is it only juniors who are like this and not seniors?</p>
<p>Because by senior year they have realized that it doesn’t freaking matter anymore.</p>
<p>Nothing like my school at all. Since the amount of kids in all honors/AP is so few (probably only like 20% of the grade), we all get along and we’re not competitive or anything.</p>
<p>I wish I went to your school! In our school, I have a 5.3/6.0 or 4.3/5.0 and I am just in the top 10%. :(</p>
<p>My school has F-ed up the GPA system so hard, it’s not even funny. Every AP class adds .16 per credit to your GPA and every honors class adds .08 per credit. W.T.F. is that?</p>
<p>At least your school weighs AP higher than honors. Our school puts the same weight on honors and AP courses. Our GPA system has serious problems.</p>
<p>The problem with ours is that a C in AP ends up being better than an A in honors. And the val ends up being the person who took the most APs, usually supplemented with APs from FLVS.</p>
<p>Most of the top students in my class are crazy about rank and sat scores. to them, those are just about the most important aspects of high school. And when it comes to extracurriculars, they don’t actually like or care about what they do; they simply do them to make their resume look better to colleges.</p>
<p>I can’t even have a conversation with any of the top students in my grade without it turning to rank/grades/college application. I mean, it’s good to talk about this stuff once in a while, but I enjoy being ignorant sometimes. That’s why most of my friends are intelligent people who don’t work and are therefore at the lower end of the grade spectrum. They don’t have their grades, but are probably smarter than the top ranking students. They’re not obsessive, they’re fun, and great to hang out with. Thank God.</p>
<p>My school isn’t ranked, though it can get competitive. At the end of junior year, we learned who was in the top 10% (which I was), and some kids got really upset about not making it. One would get all red and say really ******-bag comments for weeks afterward if anyone brought it up. </p>
<p>I remember a few years ago when about 4 or 5 kids went to Princeton (in a class of about 50). None of them seemed overly competitive to me, or to the teachers who taught them. They just liked learning and were smart. </p>
<p>Go figure.</p>
<p>^I’d say admissions officers can tell which are just obsessed with grades and which actually have a life outside of them, so Princeton people are pretty well rounded. School people are usually of all sorts.</p>
<p>You reminded me - once a couple friends of mine on a soccer team [the same one] were competing for this international soccer camp or something, and one got accepted while the others didn’t. Most took it well, but one of them started cursing the guy who got accepted behind his back and was all jealous and started cursing the team and etc. </p>
<p>Competitiveness is good in some cases [it drives you to be better], but extremes - never.</p>