How are these awards in the eyes of an AO? My daughter is a very solid student but she didn’t win an Olympic gold medal or wasn’t honored by the AMA for cancer research. LOL. Are either of these awards college application worthy? (Not sure which one she is getting)
Also…What about these awards:
-NHS
-National Math Honor Society (I think?)
-Award for being on the high honor roll / a varsity athlete for all four years of HS
-Nominated by her language teacher for best German language student and was awarded at
the county level.
Award for leadership from a local college. (Not sure why she got that. She has zero affiliation
with that college)
Any of these stand out as being better or worse to an AO?
AP Scholar and NHS type awards are pretty generic. Colleges that attract many high performing applicants won’t care about those, but colleges that don’t attract a lot of high performing applicants might be glad to see those awards.
I wouldn’t list the "award"from the college she has no connection to. Sounds more like a marketing ploy on their part.
My own kid followed the rule of thumb that a more interesting award is better than a more generic award, even if the award is more modest and/or more local. For example a Kindest Student of the Month award is more interesting than NHS, even though Kindest Student is just a little local school-based award.
My daughter had room and included them. Especially at schools that did not look at test scores, she figured it was a way of demonstrating she not only took rigorous classes but also mastered the material.
I don’t know if it helped her (Stanford was not impressed ), but I certainly don’t think it hurt.
Nationally last year,~660,000 students got some Scholar award, and ~215,000 got the highest Distinction award. So not super unique, though still a nice accomplishment.
The AP revamped its award levels some years ago – there used to be more and one that I believe had a higher bar than Distinction does now.
This may not be be the case. Some colleges give book awards or leadership awards. They are marketing ploys, but the award can have some value if the high school faculty chooses one student who represents the ideals stated in the award. It’s not so much the college’s award
that is relevant to admissions, but the fact that the student is chosen by his or her teachers.
I feel like these awards are just part of the AP marketing machine. The performance bar is not that high and you get rewarded for take MORE APs.
As far as OP’s daughter goes, the awards listed are as generic as they come, but in aggregate I they tell a nice story. She is well rounded and dedicated across the board. That’s not a bad thing.
), but I certainly don’t think it hurt.