I think that the significance depends partly on the school and how it defines the award. For example, at one school in our community, there is a single book award associated with an Ivy. It is given to the top student of the junior class. At another school, there are several such book awards as well as val, sal, top 10 students etc. At a third, there are no book awards at all.
That said, in most cases, this kind of award doesn’t provide an admissions edge or monetary rewards (RPI aside). Admissions weighs most heavily the GPA, course rigor, test scores, LORs, and ECs.
@thirdkidislost I don’t remember if I got any true academic awards or not, but I do remember getting “most improved” student in one class. That acknowledgement to this day is one of my most treasured because it was demonstrative of a lot of hard work and perseverance to bring a first-quarter C up to a fourth-quarter A (with a few B’s in between). When awards come easily, sometimes you don’t appreciate the effort behind them.
While merit played a role in awards at our high school, it definitely appeared as if the “popular” or “sociable” kids were more likely to win more awards than those who were merely capable but introverted. Kids who “chatted up” the principal seemed to get more awards. Kids who accomplished outside achievements that reflected well on the school - placing in competitions for instance - got awards.
My well regarded prep school had no book or other awards because they didn’t believe in them. I think most of the public schools around her have book awards. I lknow our local Harvard club gives out tons of books and has a committee devoted to taing care of the task.
I’m pretty sure that RPI award is the medal http://admissions.rpi.edu/undergraduate/admission/freshman/rpimedal.html At least at our school it’s considered very prestigious. Most of the kids who get it are so good they end up going to even more prestigious places. (MIT, Harvard, Cornell for the ones I know.)
I think the school awards nights are pretty meaningless and don’t even happen for most kids until well after acceptances. My own kid is quiet and never received an award for anything in high school, despite being in the top ten percent. Over a hundred kids received awards in everything from child care, to fashion, the physics. It is a popularity contest.
I think it depends on the school, whether it is a “popularity contest” or an achievement. Most of the kids who earned awards at my kids’ HS actually did something notable to earn them. Scored top 10% nationally in a language or math exam, for instance.
hi OP your post took me back to high school. At graduation, I received zero awards. A teacher came up afterwards and said he couldn’t understand it and apologized to me…it’s ok, it didn’t affect my college admissions. But at the time, it felt like an insult given my class ranking (1 of 500). and it felt like it mattered.
It turns out that the year before I had received a book award. I later saw this on a plaque in the school (after graduating). Can’t remember the college, because the school never awarded it to me, actually. so that’s how seriously they took it. I did win the most improved athlete senior year, in my first year of a sport and a varsity letter. I still have the varsity letter over 30 years later.
what does this comment mean for you? I think I became a lot happier when I learned to appreciate the people that appreciated me (the coach, even though I was definitely NOT a starter). Learning to pay less attention to the teachers and others that didn’t appreciate my other academics (the ones that didn’t nominate me for awards) would have been helpful. And, it would have been a much better idea just to focus on my own opinion, rather than what the school thought about me. I hope that you can get to that point sooner than I did.
I agree with the poster that said colleges give book awards so you can learn about their college. You can do that without the award…become a fan of Dartmouth, or wherever you think is cool, and pursue them anyway, without the award.
The awards are not meaningless as you get them for an achievement but are meaningless to colleges as they do not offer more information. For example my D got a high school award because she scored high in a national language exam. What is she going to write in her app?
-Medal in National Spanish exam
-High school academic award for medalling in National Spanish exam?
Now, if a high school offers academic awards that are not obvious in the transcript or the rest of the app I think those would help.
At our high school the book awards go to the kids ranked 1 to 4 so again not much info as the school releases ranking.
At our school, a student who got caught misbehaving at prom had their awards stripped from them in a sort of bizarre analogous court martial. Not sure that it had any impact on admissions, though.