High School Awards

<p>So our school basically has this long list of scholarships and awards given to outstanding students. There were a ton of them and I know all the seniors...atleast most including myself filled them out. </p>

<p>Months later I found out I didn't get picked for even one. It seemed okay at first but I saw a good 70% of my class mates get picked for one or multiple awards, including the majority of my friends. Most of them are really smart and work hard in school but I saw other students who never seemed to quite do much in school getting picked.</p>

<p>I'm happy for all my friends and everyone that got some recognition but I can't help but feel a little left out when I took just as many APs, wrote all the application essays and atleast in my opinion worked just as hard if not harder than some of the students winning those.</p>

<p>Curious to know if anyone else has high schools that hand out awards and scholarships like this and if they faced a similar situation or knew how exactly students were picked to receive them (in some cases it looked random). This doesn't bother me much but I feel a little worthless compared to my peers, if so many of them could be awarded something, probably shouldn't matter in the long run.</p>

<p>The high school awards’ night is not a big deal in the long run. In fact, after you get into college, high school essentially is not a big deal. College awards/scholarships, etc. matter more, of course and the prestige of awards’ night fades after, well, that night.</p>

<p>But yeah, it does seem like “random” people get some of those awards. Some things like financial aid can matter if someone has more need and that particular scholarship awards factors need greatly. There are also many based on what field you want to study, etc that maybe 2 people who don’t “stand out” are going into those fields and receive the award. There are then those that fit the “well-rounded kid” or the kid towards the top, in ECs, leadership, etc., that I sometimes think go to students they pick out of a hat. I don’t think it really matters though. I mean, it does, but sometimes these awards nights are bogus. Lol, a handful of kids who are invited don’t go.</p>

<p>have you considered what your GPA, ECs, and overall impressions were?
For example, my high school gave awards out and they were all based on merit except the citizenship award(which was the teacher’s pet award, so my frineds call it.)
Only about 10% of our entire awards were dedicated to hard-workers</p>

<p>At my school I feel as if it is biased. Kids in the AP’s get the awards. I’d say only 2-4 of the core class awards were given off to those in regular classes.</p>

<p>This is because one is for the highest GPA (and they use weighted), and one is for the one who is most involved. Generally, the only ones a regular can get is the second one.</p>

<p>But as AnnaSmith says, it’s not a big deal in high school.</p>

<p>At my school we have an Outstanding Achievement award and a Certificate of Merit award for each class. I got none this year which is pretty dissapointing, but oh well. I’ll just have to quit coming in 3rd.</p>

<p>We are having an award night tonight, 175 students were invited lol. I’ll let yall know what I win when I get back as I know everyone cares haha</p>

<p>Ah that sucks OP. Sometimes I think they just choose different people so everyone feels happy and nobody feels left. Everyone assumes you will get an award from another department, and then you’re left without anything. Oh well, in the words of someone wise I know, nobody ever penalized Phelps for being an amazing swimmer in many races. Nobody said, “Don’t race the relays…it’s unfair to the other teams when you’ve already won individual medals”, etc.</p>

<p>It seems to me that in my school, all the high achieving students are not being recognized, while all the low achieving students are… I’m talking everyone in the top 4% are not even given out scholarships from the school, which has been a tradition in our school… Then again, it must be the new principle’s idea…</p>

<p>Seriously, us high achieving students need money too… even if it is just a couple hundred bucks… that pays for our textbooks!</p>

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<p>I think the History Department does this at my school. My brother was going to be a history major, and he was by far the most deserving student in his class, but it was the only department that didn’t give him an award (out of the main 4).</p>

<p>I’ll see what I get tomorrow night.</p>

<p>I got an award for Enthusiasm and Outstanding Work in Chemistry (so basically the best chem student in the school;)). Go me!</p>

<p>I’ll see what I get tonight…</p>

<p>Depends on the magnitude of the award…a national high school award is really big</p>

<p>I got the College of the Holy Cross Book Award this year…i felt good but I was disappointed I didn’t get any leadership / community service one (those that did did pretty much an eighth of everything ive done)</p>

<p>that was disappointed but oh well, the universe tends to unravel as it should</p>

<p>I got plaques from the Math Department, Science Department, AcaDeca, Music and for being Valedictorian. I also got certificates for being a NMF, Journalism, and PE :D.</p>

<p>We’ve got the same thing, except the teachers nominate students and pick(Awards range from trophies to medals to certificates.) I had owned up my Calc class all year only to find out I didn’t get picked… They mostly choose the good grade+work hard. All I did was sleep in class and ace the tests.</p>

<p>Out of dozens of academic awards, like five were won by males. And three of them were the same guy. Guys at my school are lame, they couldn’t even win the physics or math awards.</p>

<p>They gave out 7 English awards - 6 girls, 1 boy.</p>

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lol, you sound like this one kid who won 10 awards at my ceremony. Weird thing is, he’s going to Oregon State (not even honors)</p>

<p>At our school we don’t give out many awards to non-seniors. Basically we have awards that go to the top two people (grade-wise) in every particular class. This year the awards for all the academic classes were essentially split by three people, all girls in keeping with the trend. I myself was not one of them, but I did get one award for AP Calc. The class only has four people in it though and I’m pretty sure I was second lol. Anyway they also have this set of four awards for juniors given out by the University of Rochester: one for technology, one for science, one for humanities, and one for leadership. I got the science one. Does any other school give these out? They are basically a way for Rochester to recruit so I wouldn’t be surprised. </p>

<p>As for seniors, our school gives out a TON of scholarship money for a small school. I mean the kid who won the most money won 14k, and our grad. class is <90, so fancy that. From what I’ve heard those awards are basically split among the top five.</p>

<p>Oh and there’s a few departmental type awards too, like a chem one (highest avg. in two years of chem). Those are only ~$100 though so they aren’t a big deal.</p>