Why is my jquery val() not picking the actual selected value from my select box?
<p>When I type <code>$('select[id*=lstAdvGradYear]')</code> chrome gives me </p>

<pre><code>&lt;select name="Views\ContentArea$ctl00$lstAdvGradYear" id="Views\ContentArea_ctl00_lstAdvGradYear" class="ddReplace" style="display: none; "&gt;
    &lt;option value="2016"&gt;2016&lt;/option&gt;
    &lt;option value="2015"&gt;2015&lt;/option&gt;
    &lt;option value="2014"&gt;2014&lt;/option&gt;
    &lt;option selected="selected" value="2013"&gt;2013&lt;/option&gt;
    &lt;option value="2012"&gt;2012&lt;/option&gt;

&lt;/select&gt;
</code></pre>

<p>When I type <code>$('select[id*=lstAdvGradYear]').val()</code> chrome replies with <code>"2016"</code>.</p>

<p>When I type <code>$('select[id*=lstAdvGradYear] option:selected ').val()</code> chrome also replies with <code>"2016"</code></p>

<p>When I type <code>$('select[id*=lstAdvGradYear] option:selected')</code> chrome replies with <code>[&lt;option value="2016"&gt;2016&lt;/option&gt;]</code></p>

<p>What am I doing wrong? </p>

<p>I have verified that there are no other drop downs with a similar name</p>

<p><hr>
<b>EDIT:</b> To be clear, my issue is that <code>.val()</code> should be returning 2013 NOT 2016</p>
