Valedictorians Set Up For College Disappointment

At least at tough schools like Cornell, I argue.

This topic came up in conversation last night when a couple of my high school buddies and I got together to watch our now ancient Senior Class DVD. During the graduation ceremony, about forty students were honored as valedictorians out of our class of 700 student– everyone who got above a 4.0 GPA for four years of high school received the honor. But things got worse after we left. Since our school district decided to change the grading scale, without making any adjustments to the valedictorian GPA threshold, this year’s graduating class had 120+ valedictorians. That’s almost one-fifth (!!) of the class.

This article describes the increasing trend for high schools to hand out more and more of these previously authentic and meaningful distinctions. Many of the quoted school administrators point out that while the title of valedictorian certainly doesn’t mean what it used to– actually graduating first in one’s class– it is still a good way of “honoring achievement.”

But in the meantime, until the times catch up with the title, valedictorian will still carry a connotation of being number one. Schools that are haphazardly giving out this title to graduating seniors are only setting these students up for disappointment in college. Students will have higher expectations about how they should be performing in college, and it will take longer for students to come to terms with the fact that a 3.9 GPA is only reserved for the top 5-10% of the class. Academic performance and college experiences will suffer as a result.