“Yes, it has definitely watered things down a little bit,” said Jim Rawlins, president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. “Definitely, the more ultra-selective universities have to be more critical and skeptical of class ranks than before.

“The question is: Where do you cross the line? If a school has those extremely high-end numbers (of valedictorians), then I would quickly assume that grading isn’t very rigorous at all at that school,” added Rawlins, also the executive director of admissions at Colorado State University. “But I’m not sure I could say what number that needs to drop to for things to not seem out of whack to me again. Is five the limit? Three? Eight? I’m not sure. But my gut instinct as an admission director is that I’d start to wonder a bit even at four.”

In southwestern Oregon, the Medford Mail Tribune noticed the trend locally — Ashland High has 10 valedictorians this spring, North Medford High has 10, and South Medford has its 21. The newspaper recently published an editorial with the headline “…and all the children were above average,” a nod to Garrison Keillor’s fictional Lake Wobegon and a swipe at the notion that all children deserve a ribbon. Editor Bob Hunter wrote that 21 valedictorians “raises some eyebrows, as well as questions about grade inflation” and suggested “perhaps it doesn’t mean as much when it’s shared with 20 other students.”