<p>Just a quick question.....</p>
<p>How favorably do colleges look upon an eagle scout award winner when looking at applications?</p>
<p>thanks</p>
<p>The Gold Award is a major accomplishment that can only increase your chances for acceptance even at reach schools</p>
<p>There have been numerous threads on this. Here's a few.
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=68050%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=68050</a>
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=30366%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=30366</a></p>
<p>Being an Eagle Scout (which only 4% of Scouts achieve, btw) is an excellent combination of commitment and leadership, qualities adcoms are looking for. It will help, but it depends a great deal on how much you play it out.</p>
<p>Being an Eagle doesn't get the respect that it should. It is a good EC, but not usually that strong for admissions. Adcoms want to see long-term commitment and "passion" in one or two activities. If scouting was that type of activity for you, then go for it. If not, it is still a good award but not in the class of some others.</p>
<p>My D got into Brown with about average Brown SAT's and HS grades (2250, 9/303) and with her main EC being a Gold award...(of course, it IS harder to get than an Eagle).</p>
<p>It is a help in admissions & resume, but it isn't particuarly a "hook," from all that we've been able to gather. My son & many of his friends are Eagle Scouts. All of them have been rejected by some of the schools they applied to but all got into good schools that are a good "fit." Many are strong students & many received merit scholarships based on their academic record & ECs, including their eagle rank. Some others have not been as fortunate & matriculated at local state U (didn't get enough merit aid to afford out-of-state publics or privates).
So far, my son has been accepted by one school with good merit scholarship & rejected by an uberU. He's still waiting for replies from the other 6 schools--should be receiving a full-ride from one of them for being a NMF.</p>
<p>".(of course, it IS harder to get than an Eagle)."</p>
<p>Are you being serious (I'm asking a serious question, not trying to be sarcastic)? My sister and I both got Gold and Eagle Scout Awards, respectively. From her and my experiences, getting Eagle is easliy tougher and more time-consuming than getting the Gold Award. That was just my own personal experience, though.</p>
<p>I would agree, beprepn, with jackieboy; I would like to know if you honestly believe that Gold award is tougher than the Eagle award. My mom's best friend has been a Girl Scout volunteer for around twelve years, and has a son who is an Eagle scout; she would easily vouch for the toughness of the Eagle.</p>
<p>The Eagle Scout award requires twenty-one merit badge achievements (some of which take over three months at a time and require essays, physical demonstrations, and (in one case) a night out under the stars without a sleeping bag or flashlight, a project demonstrating extensive leadership and with over 100 man-hours (mine took three hundred), and two six-month troop leadership terms to achieve (and that's just the Eagle award; the preceding ranks have their own requirements that are difficult enough to force the 96% of scouts who do not achieve Eagle to quit). </p>
<p>Your comment was interesting enough for me to do some research on the Gold award. While it is very similar to Eagle (community service project, highly prestigious, and very respectable), I would argue that it's requirements are nonetheless simpler and less time-consuming (30 leadership hours versus two six month terms averaging at 16 hours per month). However, the internet doesn't really convey the experience of the Gold award, I'm sure, so if you also have a son, or similar experience with an Eagle scout, and would like to weigh in, I would be very interested in your comments. I do hope, however, that your comment was not unfounded.</p>
<p>Eagles & Golds can vary in the difficulty of getting them, the difficulty of the project, & everything that you have to do prior to the project. I've known folks who spend literally YEARS doing their Eagle project, involving dozens (if not hundreds) of volunteers that they supervise & organize. Others do a short weekend project. Similarly with Gold awards--some are very casual projects that involve a week or weekend while others are much more involved, such as coordinating & registering everyone for all the summer activities of the Girl Scout Council. Part of it depends on the requirements of the council where the scout is located & part of it is the scout involved, his/her abilities & vision of what s/he wants to do.</p>
<p>In any case, it IS a good thing & worthy achievement. It says to folks familiar with scouting that this individual has perservered & achieved the highest rank in scouting available. How much the scout wishes to share about the experience is totally up to the scout.</p>
<p>As a past Girl Scout leader ( 7 years) and the mom of an Eagle, I'd have to agree with SpinDoctor. Boy Scouts in general, Eagle or not, are much more rigorous ( or hard-core, as my daughter says) than Girl Scouts.
While my D was home this spring break, she was looking over my son's notebook and accomplishments, was very impressed and somewhat annoyed thinking back to her Girl Scout years. " If we had taken long term backpacks, rock-climbed twice a year, participated in bike marathons and river-rafting, I would have stayed in Girl Scouts through high school. When we camped, it was car-camping in designated Scout camps. We never did anything physically challenging at all!" I am ashamed to admit as a Girl Scout leader, that was pretty much the way it was across the board in every troop I encountered. Girl Scouts learn skills, but they don't have the "adventure" label that most of my son's experiences could claim.
That's not to say that Girl Scouts isn't a wonderful and worthwhile organization, and that the community service isn't broad and growth oriented. But the experiences are very different.</p>
<p>HImom, I took four years to do my project...which, ironically, seems simple enough. Benches. Lots of Benches.</p>
<p>It took my friend years to do his project, which involved upgrading the HI BS residential camp & trails & felling LOTS & LOTS of trees. He is amazed & amused by what passes for Eagle projects sometimes these days.</p>
<p>My daughter dropped out of GS (I was a leader too) because they didn't get to have the same ranks & chop trees & make camp gadgets & do all the more adventurous fun stuff brother was doing with BS. :( GS was very cliquish--much more so then in the 70s when I was a GS. BS seems much more into helping lots of different kinds of kids get along & work together. It drew a lot more on the community & parents of other scouts than GS.</p>
<p>I have to agree that it doesn't seem to have helped my son. He is a very strong student, yet he has gotten the minimum merit awards at the colleges he has been accepted to so far. At one school he was passed over for a leadership scholarship. He has applied to numerous outside scholarship and gotten nothing from those either. Scouting is his main activity - strong leadership roles for the past 5 years, worked 80 hours per week during the summer at a scout camp and was hired as a director at age 17. I don't think he regrets doing all the work, but I would not recommend doing it just for college.</p>
<p>first off, I wouldn't consider myself an "Eagle award winner". You didn't "win" anything; the rank only gets earned through years of hard work. You should be proud of being an Eagle, because as someone already mentioned, onlye 4% of Scouts end up getting this award.</p>
<p>My Troop's District Rep. has a close friend who is on the Admissions committee at Princeton. Guess what she said the most impressive achievement (extracurricular-wise that is) a high school boy could earn?</p>
<p>If you manage to stay active enough in a troop for 5-7 years to get the rank, I would imagine it plays a large role in my life. I know it did for me since I would spend at least 3 weeks of every summer in summer camp/leadership camps/high adventure camps. I wrote my main college essay about Philmont, and I believe it truly IS the most significant thing I have done. </p>
<p>I consider service to be the only "real" way of showing leadership. Being a president on a sports team, being the president of NHS, being class president, and being the president of French Club requires little dedication and time, if any. You're basically showing that you have a good personality. That does not mean you have the maturity to actually LEAD the team or organization that has appointed you as its "president"</p>
<p>Getting the rank of Eagle Scout is truly the best way to win over the admissions' officers. Seven years, leadership, religious faith, hard work, service to the community, and learning about the peaceful ways of the Native Americans before colonization are all packaged into one award. What more could you ask for?</p>
<p>Yeah..I'm pretty into Boy Scouts if you couldn't tell :)</p>
<p>Remember the voice of the Eagle forever!</p>
<p>tupacodaman: I couldn't agree with you more. My son has gotten more out of Scouting than he ever got out of school. However, I don't think his accomplishments have been recognized by the schools he applied to. Looking over the kids who did receive a leadership award at one school, most of them were captains of a sport. My son has also been very actively involved in his troop. My recommendation to the individual who posed the question is don't earn Eagle just for college, do it for yourself. As my son was told during his Eagle Scout interview, you are an Eagle Scout for life and it carries certain obligations. Good luck to you.</p>
<p>tupacodaman:
There were some threads in an earlier post on the topic. My S was moderately active in his troop and made Eagle his senior year. There was a strong tendency in his troop for scouts to go from tenderfoot to life in a year and then sit around for a couple years before the troop would allow them to be made Eagle. In some troops, it is my understanding that they don't have to wait. In my own opinion, I think that Eagle is a very impressive award but that it has been diluted in different troops. From my reading, I think that there are some adcoms who love scouting, but that most see Eagle as I do. Your own accomplishment is very impressive. If you use Scouting as an EC where you have had long term commitment, it will help you a lot in admissions. However, you should emphasis all of scouting. Good luck.</p>
<p>I think the leadership from scouting is appreciated by adcoms if you also show leadership in other areas/activities in your life. By itself, even with dedicated troop and community involvement, colleges will look at scouting as one activity. If you have a couple of other meaningful ECs in which you've also shown strong leadership, having earned the Eagle will reinforce the impression of your being someone who will add something special to the college community.</p>
<p>Some of the earlier posts contrasted Boy Scouts with Girl Scouts. I had a son, but I was once told that Boy Scouts was a leadership program and Girl Scouts was a self-sufficiency program. Any comments?</p>
<p>Hmmm- I don't think I'd describe them so simply. Boy Scouts teaches "survival skills" as well as leadership. I haven't seen a lot either with Girl Scouts.
I think Girl Scouts is best known for the it's strong focus on community service. (other than their cookies :) ) It seems like their program leans more toward career exploration than self-sufficiency, although they are both related.</p>
<p>Both groups give kids a lot of practice with various life skills, which are often not availble in the school setting.</p>
<p>Sad to say, in our state, it FEELS like GS is a closed social clique that kids have from whenever they start until they stop. I had very positive experiences as a GS & was sad my daughter's experiences weren't similar. The troop she began in folded & merged with another troop which never really accepted the "newcomers." That troop in turn folded & merged with yet another troop which really isolated the newcomers, so daughter gave it up. :( That troop folded as well.
Son's BS experience has been much less cliquish, partly because kids are from so many different schools & different ages. It may also be a gender thing, I'm not sure. The older boys provide leadership for the younger ones & the troop is contantly growing & changing with frequent new adult leadership. It is a much more inclusive group that GS was for daughter.</p>