<p>How beneficial are awards to your application? I don't seem to have many awards and am scared that it will seriously hurt my application.</p>
<p>Don't be scared. Being scared will probably just mess you up. Stressing about the things you cannot change will only take away from your focus on the things that you can change. Like, developing your essays. And putting effort into a club or a job, and, maybe even if this doesn't result in an award, you can express it in your application with a great essay or a warm rec.
That said, I'm sure many people from average schools and without some strange hook factor get in without major awards. I got in a few weeks ago and my biggest awards were the psat merit finalist thing and some regional debate and model un awards. However I also wrote an essay about debate and had a very positive rec for it, which probably added more dimension to that activity than my regional award did.
Until 2 weeks ago I was stressed out about colleges, and looking back the worst mistake I made in my applications was to worry so much that it actually got in my way and affected the way I wrote my applications. So really <em>don't worry</em> instead <em>be productive, decide to focus on developing a few clubs/skills/jobs/essays and go for it without fear of failure or awardlessness</em></p>
<p>You should always try for awards that are available to you, like Olympiad competitions or anything else that you find interesting. I'm pretty sure that as long as you show talent and passion in whatever activity you do though, that those qualities will show up in your essays whether or not you win a lot of awards.</p>