<p>The problem I see with my app is that I have practically no awards, besides the departmental ones from my school. My school doesnt really give out big awards nor do we have any of those major competitions near us. The area where I live suffers from a dearth of opportunities... so how much will having no awards hurts me?</p>
<p>not even county or regional competitions???... and I thought I was in the middle of nowhere</p>
<p>I'm sure adcoms will take that into account, but it still looks bad... I think elite colleges would've liked to have seen from you some initiative to go out and find things you could have competed in, though</p>
<p>the only awards I have are national merit/AP scholar, so I completely feel you...</p>
<p>oh yeah and the bio olympiad semifinalist, but that's really not that much</p>
<p>the point is that I really don't think colleges penalize you that much. hopefully they know your school well enough to realize that there just aren't opportunities available to fill up that space in your resume. of course it would be a different story if your school offered all those things and you just didn't earn them...it's all about context, I suppose</p>
<p>I only have a few "standard" academic awards and an all-stars thing from a sport I quit.... and I live in LA. Plenty of opportunities, I just guess my extracurriculars of choice don't offer awards. </p>
<p>Try not to worry :-) what's done is done and I'm sure you're spectacular in other ways that don't require a list.</p>
<p>I really have nothing except National Merit Commended and AP Scholar with Honor. Like really. My school isn't "competitive" at the Science Olympiad, so I have like one Regional medal. It's an academically competitive school, but the other girls never prepare.</p>
<p>I don't play sports. I do lots of cool things, none of which really give out awards. </p>
<p>"It is better to deserve honors and not receive them than to receive them and not deserve them"<br>
My man Mark Twain.</p>
<p>I had B's on my transcript too (not a TON, but a sprinkle). I'm from New York (Buffalo, but still), not Wyoming. I got into the University of Chicago, and I was completely confident when I applied that I'd get in for some reason. </p>
<p>Good luck! You'll get in somewhere good even if it isn't HYSZXCTTYL.</p>
<p>Chicago...............mmmmmmmm :]</p>
<p>"not even county or regional competitions???... and I thought I was in the middle of nowhere"</p>
<p>I gagged when I read this. Are you serious? Get over yourself.</p>
<p>OP, chill, don't worry. I guarantee you that you are doing great if you have departmental awards. Your school has acknowledged your achievement in those areas. Unless those awards were handed to you without a reason, you'll be fine.</p>
<p>No, seriously, the cornfields of Minnesota don't have a whole lot to offer...</p>
<p>We have like a regional math competition and a few other city (if you can call it a city) wide things...</p>
<p>o yea... we have academic decathlon - there are 8 teams in the ENTIRE state (and Minnesota's not a small state like Wyoming) but there are at least a couple hundred high schools</p>
<p>I give you an award for being hilarious... "The area where I live suffers from a dearth of opportunities..." that is just kinda funny.</p>
<p>I feel for you my fellow asian brother.
I live in China, and there isnt too many things here. And our school isnt big enough to go into the international science math athletic or anything. So, I just put down some sports awards, academic awards...
What to do...</p>
<p>I had no awards either (like, nothing significant... ) the only things i put there were honor roll and crap like that. I still got into a really good school. Don't sweat it.</p>
<p>Awards, unless they are like intel, are one of the LEAST important parts of the application - the essay, recs., GPA, SAT's, Real Extracurriculars, and all that take precedence over awards. Awards of course still usually stand over things like geographic diversity and crap like that, but its the least important of the main factors, simply because the awards one gets all depend if one knows about them or not and such.</p>
<p>yeah, i am a little concerned about the no awards thing, but a lot of people in my school have gotten into great schools without any so i'm not TOO worried.</p>
<p>I really don't think awards are that big of a deal. I've never competed in anything – I don't really WANT to compete in anything, I really don't like competing. Does that mean I'm a bad student, or an uninteresting or unaccomplished person? And does getting an award for a math competition or something make you an accomplished person?</p>
<p>I only have National Merit Semifinalist and a state award thing (honorable mention – it was based, I think, solely on GPA). I don't feel insecure about it at all. I mean, yeah, it would be nice to have some awards, but I wouldn't really want to go out and compete for an award just because it would look good. I don't mean to say that most people compete just for that reason, but seeing as I'm not a competitive person (except in silly ways), if I did, it probably would be for that reason.</p>
<p>A little rant there. All in all, don't worry about it, awards really don't say that much about you as a person in most cases. If it were something amazing, yeah, that'd be great and help, but the absence of awards doesn't say that you suck or anything.</p>
<p>Yeah, I was lacking in the "academic honors" area of the commonapp. My school doesn't give any out, either, and there's not really any ACADEMIC competitions around. I just had some stupid awards from two of my state universities, that almost everyone in my school got last year. Supposedly they're to top students in New Mexico, but who knows. Then I just put honor roll. haha.</p>
<p>no honors for international either</p>
<p>Would medals from science competitions and stuff like that count as awards? I thought you put down that you've won a few first and second place medals on that space where you list your EC's (and it says any honors you earned in this EC, or something like that.)</p>