I have a son who got into Boys State, elected as Governor and then nominate to Boys Nation where he was also elected to a high position. Do Boys State and Boys nation get listed as separate honors on common app? Would Model UN awards be better as one of the five honors instead of listing that he was deans list every semester of school? How about AP Scholar - impressive or leave out? Thank you.
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You can list AP Scholar if you need something. It, by itself, means little. It’s what was accomplished is what matters and they know by the scores reported. But many include. It’s fine. It doesn’t hurt.
Can’t speak to the others.
I don’t worry about awards if you don’t have. You don’t get awards for walking dogs at the shelter or working part time at the grocery store.
And yet those are great activities.
So Boys State/Nation and Model UN are to me both more activities than honors.
And normally I would think you would want to pack all that into two activity descriptions respectively, not separate out different parts into different entries on the application.
The logic behind that is AOs pretty much universally say they prefer quality/depth over quantity. So when you pack a lot into a single activity, that shows quality/depth. If you spread it out, that is showing quantity, which is less useful.
Obviously in theory an AO could piece it all back together, but why would you make them do that rather than make it easy for them to see how something was a high-quality/deep activity with the minimum possible time and effort? So, usually I think it makes sense to give them what they want yourself.
And by the way, if that leaves entries blank in the activities or honors sections, this is not bad! AOs repeatedly say they typically really only consider your top few activities and such, and they want help from you in understanding what you believe are your top few things. So not filling out all your entry slots but instead giving them just a handful of things that really tell a compelling story is not at all bad, if that is you of course.
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