Most college admissions counselors, at least publicly, will tell you that the rankings are worthless, that they’re one of the main villains ruining college, and that the world would be better off without the rankings. I don’t do this. Honestly, I’m glad that the rankings are out there. There are several things that rankings are good for.
When I think about high school valedictorians, two things always come to mind.
One is simple: as cool as it is to be number one at your high school, remember that every high school has a number one. There are roughly 35,000 of you every year. If you happen to be valedictorian, that's wonderful and you should feel proud.
Imagine that I have three pieces of paper, and you can steal one of them from me without me knowing.
The first is a hundred dollar bill. You take it from me, you have an extra hundred bucks, game over.
The second is a lottery ticket with 50 numbers for the next Powerball drawing (they cost $2 each, so it costs $100 total). The jackpot is $100 million. If you take this, you'll probably get nothing. Or you may get a little bit of money. But you just might (a roughly 1 in 292 million chance) win a hundred million dollars. If you win the big jackpot, there's a risk that I will accuse you of stealing the ticket from me, but that would be very difficult to prove. And that would only be likely if you win the big one. You'd probably get away with it.
The third is a bank statement that includes my account number and password. If you steal this, you'll have access to (probably) more than $100 but (almost certainly) less than $100 million. But getting the money from me will take more work, and it also has an increased risk of me or my bank catching you. If you know the right...or in this case wrong...people, you could probably sell the data to someone else and let them deal with it.
Which would you choose? Why?
I'm thinking about valedictorians for a number of reasons in this graduation season, but mostly because last week a friend sent me this article, titled "Wondering What Happened to Your Class Valedictorian? Not Much, Research Shows." My friend simply asked me: "Thoughts?"
I have thoughts.
