Just Your Average Valedictorians : Youth: County’s best and brightest high school students study hard, but insist they’re ‘definitely not nerds.’ After hanging out for the summer, they’ll head for top universities.

Christina Hong, a senior at Mission Viejo High School, has a secret--not only is she the smartest student at her school, she’s also the top graduate in Orange County. Try not to spread it around.

“I don’t like to be known as the smartest person in school,” said Hong, 18, who amassed a county-high 4.94 grade-point average and will enroll at Stanford University this fall. “I don’t like that label.”

Like many of her fellow valedictorians around the county, Hong acknowledges that she’s excited about education and dedicated to her schoolwork. But while they work hard in the classroom, the county’s top graduates also work hard to dispel the notion that they are anything other than just ordinary teen-agers.

Sure, they study a lot, and they enjoy it--Hong confessed to “having a good time” in her calculus class. But they also go the beach, and to the movies, and to the mall. They are athletes, cheerleaders, musicians and members of school clubs. No pocket protectors, horn-rimmed glasses or pants that end at the top of the ankles among this group.

“We are definitely not nerds,” said Michelle Sippl, 17, who, with a 4.17 grade-point average, is one of the top three students at San Clemente High School. “We are not so much smart as motivated and ambitious. I know a lot of people who are extremely intelligent but just sit around in class all day and don’t try.”

But this year’s crop of valedictorians from the county’s 56 public high schools not only tried, they succeeded--and their choices of universities point to their academic success. Of the 161 top graduates in the county, 69 will enter the University of California system, including 22 who will be headed to UC Berkeley--10 more Orange County valedictorians than last year--and 21 who will enroll at UCLA. Closer to home, 15 valedictorians and salutatorians will study at UC Irvine.

Robert Bailey, director of admissions and records at UC Berkeley, attributed the sharp rise in the number of the county’s top students enrolling there to a “spruced up” recruiting drive in the area and an “enhanced” system of personal interviews and campus visits. “We’re creaming off the valedictorians in Southern California,” he said.

Ruba Qashu, 17, the top student at Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton with a 4.77 grade-point average, said she opted to study biology at UC Berkeley because she “liked the atmosphere” of the school.

“There’s a great variety of people,” said Qashu, who plans to go on to medical school. “It will be exciting to be there.” She added that her parents “wanted me to stay close and go to UCLA or UC Irvine, (but) I need to break away.”

Some of the nation’s most prestigious schools are also represented in the students’ selections. Nineteen of the 161 top students plan to attend Stanford University, and nearly all of the Ivy League schools will take at least one of the best of Orange County--including eight students who will travel to Cambridge, Mass., to attend Harvard and six who will enroll at Harvard’s archrival, Yale.

But no matter how far any of those students travel to attend college, Sippl has got them all beat. This fall, she’ll say bon voyage to San Clemente and set off for the American University of Paris, where she plans to study international relations. Her goal is to become a diplomat.

Sippl said her family completely supports her plans--almost. While her relatives are all chipping in to foot the bill for the $22,000 yearly cost of tuition and expenses, and while her mother, who lived in Paris for a year as an English tutor “is ecstatic,” some members of the family are not too thrilled about sending her off to a city with a reputation for l’amour.

“My grandparents are afraid that I’m going to get married to a Frenchman,” Sippl said.

Sippl added that she’s got a few fears of her own, although they have nothing to do with amorous Parisians. The prospect of moving to Europe “has me a little nervous,” she said.

“Just going to college is a scary thing,” Sippl said. “But I was raised to have an open mind. I’m ready to take on the world.”

Contradicting feelings of uneasiness and excitement were prevalent among other valedictorians. The uneasiness was generated by the thought of going off alone into new and unfamiliar settings, separated from friends and family, but the excitement of new challenges was just as clear.

“It’s going to take some time to adjust at Stanford,” Hong said. “I’ve had a home where I’ve had a great family, and I’ve got a lot of friends I’m really close to. That’s going to take some adjusting, not having those close friends there. But the experience will teach me a lot about independence and how to take care of myself.”

Thomas McDevitt, 17, whose 4.61 grade-point average earned him a place among the five valedictorians at Sunny Hills High School, said that after four years of being among a close circle of friends, going to college will “definitely be the loss of a security blanket.”

“It’s scary because colleges are pretty much people in the top of the class,” said McDevitt, who will enter Princeton University this fall on an Army ROTC scholarship. “The competition will be a lot stiffer.”

McDevitt, Qashu and their fellow Sunny Hills valedictorians--Elisa Altman, Albert Liu, 17, and Atul Saran,, 16--described themselves as a tightknit group that spends a lot of time with each other and together suffer indignities like the senior-year “biology class from hell.” That togetherness, they said, helped get them through high school and better prepared them for what lies ahead.

“It made it easier knowing all of our friends were kind of doing the same thing,” said Altman, 17, who achieved a 4.70 at Sunny Hills and will study sociology and music at Yale this fall.

All five said they would stress the need for unity among students in their valedictory speeches at commencement ceremonies next week.

Correspondents Frank Messina and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this story.

Top Students: High school valedictorians and graduation speakers listed.N2