Our region’s winners are announced. Daughter got a few awards. Quick search on the forum indicates that it’s not much of help. It’s no wonder as I see combined 1000+ Gold Key awards in West Region at Large alone. Or does it?
My daughter received a Gold Key and was given this information:
REGIONAL AWARDS
Gold Key: The highest level of achievement on the regional level. Approximately 7 – 10% of all regional submissions are recognized with Gold Key Awards and all are considered for national-level recognition.
Silver Key: Approximately 10 – 15% of all regional submissions are recognized with Silver Key Awards.
Honorable Mention: This Award recognizes students with artistic potential. Approximately 15 – 20% of all regional submissions receive Honorable Mention Awards.
She is a senior and was told by her GC it is important and to send this update to her college admissions officers.
She was also told that there were approx. 7500 writing entries in her region and approx. 2800 of those were awarded either an Honorable Mention, Silver Key or Gold Key.
@riverboat, Congratulation! One thing I noticed from the winners list was that the awards don’t seem to be grouped by ages. Are they? I am thinking that if it is not divided by grade groups then perhaps an 8th grader winning many Gold Keys should help bs application even for a bit. Or perhaps I am just imagining. Couldn’t find that info on the Scholastic website.
I just emailed my AOs about that. I personally don’t think it’ll hurt you.
@SculptorDad That’s a good question. I just took a quick look at the list of winners for our region and it seems like most have a high school associated with them. Only a few specify middle school although there are several from independent schools which don’t indicate by their name if it is a high school or middle school student.
For national level winners, you can go to the main Arts & Writing website and filter those awards by state and grade level (Student Showcase then Award Winning Works). But for regional level, there doesn’t seem to be a similar filtering ability by grade level.
I would think that awards won by a middle schooler would be interesting for a BS admissions officer. It certainly shows initiative and skill at a young age.
Thank you @riverboat, and @minimalist I browsed the past winning works and they are amazing. It seems a big honor to have regional awards and certainly it won’t hurt her applications. I will let the schools know.
Scholastic awards are judged without regard to age and are thus not grouped by grade.
Glad to hear that. Then daughter’s silver key in writing and gold keys in art should be pretty helpful for her application! It shows that she has a good chance for winning some major arts award in the name of the boarding school that accepts her. 