Awards for Desperate Incoming Senior

Applying to College
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I am class of 2024 hoping to major in English/Creative Writing and beginning to pull together my information for college applications. What is stressing me out is that I don’t really have any awards or honors.

Here is what I’m currently able to list for that section:
Scholastic Silver Key winner (some Scholastic honorable mentions as well)
AP Scholar Award
Top 10 Winner of Creative Communication’s Celebration of Young Poets (received this in middle school so I’m not sure if I could include it)

I have applied to several competitions and literary magazines over the past two years, including the JFK Profiles in Courage Essay Contest, but haven’t been successful. I want to be able to apply to very selective colleges, but don’t know how to further pad this section. Any tips?

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“Padding” sections won’t lead to success. If it were that simple, everyone would do it.

Spend your time and effort on things that interest you. At the end of the day, most applications to highly rejective schools aren’t successful anyway. If you do things that interest you you won’t have wasted your time, and you might luck into the thing an AO is looking for.

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You’ve listed three awards here. Stop fretting about what you can’t control. You can’t control what’s already happened.

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Agree…padding an application will be percieved as just that so don’t do it. Focus your application on what you have accomplished, not what you feel is missing.

Keep in mind thay highly selective colleges have extremely low admissions rates - often in the single digits. There is not enough space for all the well qualified applicants. Do the research and come up with a well balanced application list with safety, match, and reach schools that appear affordable and that you would be excited to attend.

And FWIW I would not include a middle school award (unless it is a HUGE national or international level award).

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Your GPA will matter more than creative writing awards and I say that as a mom of a Creative Writing major.

Don’t include the middle school award unless it is really major.

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My kid’s only official award was National Merit Finalist, along with 15,000 other seniors. Oh, and a couple of high-school level ones. What got her the scholarship for which she was nominated was the stuff that she achieved, and it didn’t matter that there are no national awards for these achievements.

It’s true that a few very rejective colleges really only care about the official recognition a student gets (I’m looking at you, Harvard), but everybody else, including many many top colleges, care more about what you did than about the awards that you won.

What you need to work on is your portfolio. AOs for creative writing programs know that very very few students get awards in creative writing, and that these awards are extremely subjective (based purely on the preferences of the judges for that particular competition in that particular year).

You should also be trying to publish your writings, as well as submitting to every single literary competition out there.

You don’t want to “pad” anything. Every AO will see right through it, and it will not help your application.

ALso, the best creative writing programs are not always in the colleges with the lowest acceptance rates. I like this list, because it’s by a literary journal. Others are generally by college consulting companies which have vested interests in students wanting to attend colleges with low acceptance rates.:

Acceptance rates to most of these colleges has dropped substantially, especially NYU, but you can see that there are many colleges that are excellent for creative writing that have acceptance rates above 20%.

The “even more college you should consider” are all also amazing colleges for students interested in creative writing.

Another consideration is cost. Creative writing is NOT a lucrative field, so you should be looking at th emost affordable colleges, not the colleges with the lowest acceptance rates.

This should probably be repeated a few more times.

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My second kid was in the top 10 students in the class. Never won a single award of any kind…except being in All State and regional orchestras (kid was not a music major in college). This kid got accepted to the college of choice and was very happy.

In terms of looking for colleges…why this?

There are plenty plenty of wonderful colleges which will be very happy to have you as a student and where you can achieve your career goals.

My suggestion…instead of trying to pad your resume…spend some time finding two sure things for admission, that you would be happy to attend, and that are affordable. Then build your list UP from there…and include some selective schools if you want to.

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I personally like the approach suggested in the “Applying Sideways” blog on the MIT admissions web site. I understand that MIT is not likely to be a good fit for someone interested in “English/Creative Writing”. However, the same approach is valuable for other selective universities, and has helped family members get accepted to several very good programs at other universities.

The point is to do what is right for you, and do it very well. You should not be trying to guess what university admissions might want you to do. Instead do what is right for you.

I would not worry about the lack of awards. You will however want to make sure that you apply to at least one and preferably at least two solid safeties. In some cases these might (or might not) be more difficult to select compared to reaches since reaches are often famous schools.

Things like tutoring other students, volunteering, or working a job are good ECs, even if they do not result in an award. There are of course many other very good ECs that are not going to result in any award.

What is right for you is likely to be very different from what is right for me (and what was right for anyone else will be very different again).

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One creative writing endeavor that I think really helped my daughter was her application essay. She wrote some really great essays. Spend your time on that. Submit to some journals too but knock those essays out of the park!

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Awards - many have none.

What’s far more important is what you’ve accomplished.

The kid walking dogs at the shelter doesn’t earn an award etc. or a kid who has a part time job. And those are two of many great things a kid can do.

Things like AP Scholar are meaningless. What isn’t meaningless is what you accomplished to earn it.

So don’t worry about a lack of awards and college.

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I wish there were awards for kids who took a grandparent for medical treatments every week because the grandparent doesn’t speak English and needed a translator. I wish there were awards for kid who shovel snow for an elderly neighbor without being asked so that the guy who delivers Meals on Wheels won’t slip and fall. I wish there were awards for kids who find time to play with the developmentally disabled toddler down the street who isn’t old enough for nursery school so doesn’t have kids his own age to interact with.

You don’t need awards. Just focus on being the best version of yourself you can be!

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well said - we need to post that every time someone says - but my awards are lacking.

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But there aren’t awards for sitting in your room playing Fortnite 6 hours/day.

Not suggesting this is what OP is/was doing… but it is what many kids are doing and then coming into the end of the Junior year going “oh no”.

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There is no reason to seek out awards. No one will know what this student does in their spare time…and that includes gaming.

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Awards or not the OP (and any applicant) should put the focus on the positive things he/she has accomplished - whatever those things may be. Many valuable achievements and responsibilities do not come with awards.

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Heck, I spend way too much time on Ebay scrolling for things I’ll never buy so I get mindless activity as a hobby! But kids think in very binary terms- if it’s not an official HS club with a president, it’s not an activity or EC. If you didn’t get a citizenship award from the mayor, you don’t have any civic activities to talk about.

But there are kids volunteering and doing positive stuff in their communities every day-- and that’s ok too.

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Yep, so true.

All those things you mentioned in your above post, and any similar outside of school activities, should be listed as ECs on the student’s app.

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Hear hear!

These are great examples, btw, of ECs that students can and should list in the activities section.

High schoolers don’t need awards to succeed in college. In fact, college is a great chance to do something meaningful that can really help in future success.

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