Primack said hearing the news was surreal.
"It was never something that I aspired to be," he said. "I was happy, but it was a pretty big surprise."
Primack said he learned he he was valedictorian Thursday to permit him time to prepare his speech for the Commencement ceremonies. He said his remarks will concern the idea that each student should make Dartmouth unique to himself.
"I am planning to speak about the importance of our own individual Dartmouth and moving away from the abstract, ideal singular Dartmouth that we all have to struggle to share," he said.
During his academic career at the College, Primack earned academic citations in classes in the religion, anthropology and theater departments. In 2005 he was awarded the Phi Beta Kappa Sophomore Prize for the highest GPA in his class, and was an early inductee into the Phi Beta Kappa society. He also worked with anthropology professor Kirk Endicott as a Presidential Scholar during his junior year. He was a Rufus Choate Scholar each year, a distinction awarded to students whose GPAs rank within the top five percent of undergraduates.
Although Primack said he believes Dartmouth students are aware of their grades, he added that maintaining a 4.0 GPA was not on the top of his mind.
"I think every Dartmouth student cares about his or her grades ... but I never put so much pressure on myself to maintain the perfect GPA," Primack said.
He said that Susan Ackerman, a religion professor with whom he has coauthored two articles for publication, is his favorite professor, noting her class titled "The Bible: Sex and Sexuality" as the course that stands out most from his time at Dartmouth.
"She's really encouraged me to think as an independent scholar, to question the assumptions that are in the field," he said.
Outside of the classroom Primack served as a tutor at the Student Center for Research, Writing, and Information Technology and also volunteered for the Haven Homework Club.
"It's been very important to me to look beyond the Hanover bubble," he said. "There's a lot going on right in our own backyards."
Away from the College, Primack has worked with the Anti-Defamation League in Los Angeles and for the law firm of O'Melveny & Meyers, LLP.
After graduation, he plans to attend the law school at the University of California-Los Angeles to study entertainment law. His ultimate goal is to end up in the movie business.
"I've wanted to produce films since I was five years old," Primack siad. "I've been thinking about backing into it from a legal standpoint for a while."
Jeremy Schneider '07 from Piedmont, Calif., has maintained a 3.99 GPA, making him this year's salutatorian.
Like Primack, Schneider was a Rufus Choate Scholar all four years. He was amongst the winners of the James B. Reynolds Scholarship in 2007 and was awarded the Louis Morton Memorial Prize for the best essay in European history.
A history major, Schneider received the Charles Downer Hazen Fellowship for the highest GPA in the department. For his thesis he focused on "Ovaltine advertisements in the interwar period in the British Empire -- tracing how a western manufacturer would change its image or how it's product is marketed differently in different contexts."
Schneider is a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity as well as a performer with the Dartmouth Chamber Orchestra.
After graduation, Schneider will "dip his foot in the graduate school waters," studying economic and social history at Oxford University.
