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It is quite interesting that a good friend of my brother's in high school went to Yale. But thats not the only interesting part. I got a phone call the other day by one of my brother's good friends and he said that the girl ended up as the Valedictorian of her graduating class (2004) at Yale University. She was an aspiring person: a great student, a great artist (good enough for Yale to accept her) but not the outrageously smart type. I'm quite impressed as that is perhaps one of the greatest feats that one can accomplish at the collegiate level and doing this at Yale University was even more impressive. Anyway I gotta make a few phone calls spreading the news and congratulations

By Alpinesun (Alpinesun) on Sunday, June 06, 2004 - 05:02 pm: Edit

Congrats? what's the point of this thread?

By Enarang (Enarang) on Sunday, June 06, 2004 - 05:33 pm: Edit

just to inform someone of how shocked I was to hear this news. It is pretty impressive

By Encomium (Encomium) on Sunday, June 06, 2004 - 06:07 pm: Edit

It seems like impossible to be valedictorian at Yale! That means you're valedictorian among valedictorians among geniuses among psycho-geniuses...etc. Crazy.

By Newton_Jin (Newton_Jin) on Monday, June 07, 2004 - 12:27 pm: Edit

WOW! Tell her congratulations for me. I wish I could be able to be my college's valedictorian someday.

By Lostnconfused (Lostnconfused) on Monday, June 07, 2004 - 04:52 pm: Edit

that's um cool.... i mean yale has a valedictorian every year... what makes it so fascinating that she's your brothers friend? anyways thanks for sharing...

By Usunkmyb_Ship (Usunkmyb_Ship) on Monday, June 07, 2004 - 05:37 pm: Edit

Well, I think that's cool.

By Nmoreno1 (Nmoreno1) on Monday, June 07, 2004 - 06:29 pm: Edit

Congrats! that's awesome! and YALE too!

(yes, of course theres a val every year, but when you've got some sort of connection to the person, it's kinda cool!)

By Enarang (Enarang) on Tuesday, June 08, 2004 - 07:28 pm: Edit

Caught me completely by surprise. She was an aspiring artist but it wasn't her academics that truly got her in. That is why I'm so shocked yet so incredibly happy for her.

By Koopatroopa (Koopatroopa) on Tuesday, June 08, 2004 - 08:30 pm: Edit

Just a random thought: Does being the valedictorian of a college really mean anything? I'm guessing that, logically, majors vary in difficulty, so it doesn't sound THAT impressive.

Anywho, congrats to her regardless. And I hope she takes advantage of all the bragging rights.

By Enarang (Enarang) on Tuesday, June 08, 2004 - 08:57 pm: Edit

I think if you are valedictorian of Yale, Princeton or Harvard its self explanatory. Not to sounds rude or anything but c'mon tell me how many valedictorians of Yale Princeton or Harvard do u know

By Dannyferizzle (Dannyferizzle) on Tuesday, June 08, 2004 - 08:59 pm: Edit

they could've majored in like "children studies" though--I'd be impressed if it was an engineering or natural sciences major because those disciplines require you not only to be good at math but a good writer.

By Hstudent (Hstudent) on Wednesday, June 09, 2004 - 10:35 am: Edit

being val doesnt mean you're "smart" in any way....it just means you worked your ass off

id say about 15% of all HYPers have the ABILITY to get STRAIGHT A's the whole time - but most spend their times exploring much more than the stacks of the library....

By Foreignboy (Foreignboy) on Wednesday, June 09, 2004 - 10:51 am: Edit

I think the top 5% or so of a class in a school like Yale are roughly the same in terms of academic ability. I mean, considering how insane the stats of the top 5% acceptees every year are...

IMO, to be the Valedictorian, you have to be really smart, but it doesn't mean you are THE BEST student in your school. An analogy (some of you may have heard this from Yale admissions talks): the architect, Maya Ling made a design for the Vietnam War Memorial designing competition while at Yale as an undergrad. Her prof. said it wasn't original and gave her a C.

Anyway, she ended up winning, out of the hundreds of designs that were submitted. After that, the prof changed her grade to an A. So the point is, stuff like this does happen, even at Yale.

By Theguac (Theguac) on Wednesday, June 09, 2004 - 12:38 pm: Edit

It all depends on the major. Engineers have it harder to be valedictorian because their workload is greater and much harder than other students' work in other majors. Whereas the average GPA for an A&S major may be a 3.5, the average GPA for an engineer is a 3.1. So i'm just saying that there are many other ways to prove your intelligence other than being valedictorian, since many factors are at play here. But hey, it's always nice to have it on a resume =). Congrats! My shots at being valedictorian at my university are gone already...ugh, I hate engineering!

By Thedad (Thedad) on Wednesday, June 09, 2004 - 02:05 pm: Edit

I got to hate engineering so much but didn't have the perspective that the Dean had, who [correctly] urged me to find another major...no hurry as long as I did it by 3:00pm.

I would have been a very mediocre engineer, even if I had persevered. I liked the *idea* of engineering much better than the actual engineering itself, something that I had experience with as I was on a work-study program with the Navy doing engineering for the first three years of college (on a 3-2 program).

By Ihatesats (Ihatesats) on Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 01:54 am: Edit

Meh.