When the senior year begins then the students begin to wonder who among them will be the valedictorian, and who among them will be the salutatorian. Of course they are also considering these rankings and where they stand in their group because after the graduation diplomas have been handed out and the graduation tassels have been switched to the other side of the mortar boards a lot of colleges are going to consider where the student placed in the rankings when they consider admission acceptance. These numbers can be very influential in the lives of these young people.

It is reported that approximately forty five percent of the High Schools located in the United States currently use this method of establishing which student made better grades and had higher academic achievements than their classmates did. The majority of the schools that do not have this system established for their students are the smaller private schools. This makes it difficult for the colleges that consider the placement in these rankings as part of their admissions standards. Colleges say that because not all of the people who apply to attend their classes went to facilities that used this system of measuring accomplishments that they are forced to place a higher value on the standardized test scores presented to them. Some of the universities and colleges get other information from the offices of the facility the child was being educated in so they can attempt to make determinations on which of their applicants are most suited to come to their campuses.

All people have the same opportunity at the beginning of their freshman year to make an impression on the faculty of the educational institution they attend. They can impress these educators with the fact that they are hard working and studious and that they strive for academic excellence in all of their classes and studies. They can also impress upon them the values and the morals they hold dear and show their character in the way they conduct themselves and the way they treat others. All of these things can also be considered along with the placement position when the colleges are trying to decide who to accept and who to deny.

Community service plays a large part in the decisions of some of the universities as well. This is because they actually want to accept the most well rounded of the people that are applying to come to their campus. College is an academic learning environment but it is also a very social place that the young scholar will expected to acclimate themselves into. A person must be able to handle the social pressures and stress as well as the academic challenges of attending one of these facilities in order to be accepted. It is paramount to the acceptance that the student proves they are capable of being alone in a group of peers and they will be able to fit into the groups around them, if they are not socially ready for this experience too many of them quit or worse.