<p>Well I've won a couple of awards from competitions etc from middle school all the way to now. Can I list all of the most honorable ones all the way back from middle school? Also, can you put down private lessons, for example music lessosn, for your ecs? Would helping out your parent's business be counted? Do you need to put dates next to the name of the award or what? I'm not sure how the application is formatted. Is there any way I can obtain a copy of the real application and see what colleges require you to include?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>No, you cannot list any awards from middle school. Nothing about middle school goes on the application (although some schools do ask for 7th/8th grade math & science courses). ONLY awards earned from 9th grade and beyond count, sorry.</p></li>
<li><p>Private lessons? Sure, if you TAUGHT private lessons in high school, then you could list it. But if you simply ATTENDED private lessons (whether it be middle or high school), no you cannot list that. If you play an instrument for the school band or something, you could list that and lessons would generally fall under it.</p></li>
<li><p>Helping out your parent's business can count as employment, if it's "official" enough - and that's hard to verify. There is no "date" field on the application for awards, it's simply:</p></li>
</ol>
<p>AWARD - DESCRIPTION OF AWARD</p>
<p>I suppose you could include the date, but that was portray the award as a "one hit wonder" rather than a long-term achievement.</p>
<p>commonapp.org</p>
<p>You probably shouldn't put middle school awards. That looks kinda pathetic. For private lessons, you can put what you played and for what years. I think private lessons is inferred. And you can probably make "helping out your parent's business" sound more official, so yeah you can put it on.</p>
<p>P.S. IvyRomantic is too pessimistic. I'd say take my advice :D</p>
<p>Yes, you can include info about private music classes that you took. You also can include employmemt at your family business.</p>
<p>List the private music lessons if you took them for more than a year and put in a reasonable amount of effort on them. Stating that you played an instrument does not necessarily imply that you did anything more than noodling around on your own. </p>
<p>Example 1: The band members at my kids' high school get pulled out of class a couple of times per month for a short lesson from the school band director. For some, this is the only instruction that they ever get and their instruments rarely if ever get taken out of the case at home. Some of them are in it mainly for the social aspects, particularly the annual trip to an amusement park. There is nothing terribly wrong about that and I am happy that they are doing that much rather than nothing at all, but they do not demonstrate the same level of commitment as someone who is taking private lessons and putting in the practice time that those lessons require.</p>
<p>Example 2: Some of my son's friends have been trying to teach themselves to play guitar for years. They now know a few chords and can play a couple of bars of Smoke On the Water. (Which they do incessantly. Shakespeare might have been thinking of their playing when he penned the words, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.") Again, it is great that they are enjoying themselves, but they could be doing so much more with just a few months of real lessons under their belts.</p>
<p>If you can demonstrate a long term commitment and some solid achievement through your lessons, they belong on your application.</p>