Hey guys,
The Common App has five slots to list awards or honors earned throughout high school. I earned the Bronze and Silver Presidential Volunteer Service Award in my sophomore and junior years, respectively, but these aren’t strictly academic awards. Should I leave this award out of this section? Also, I wouldn’t be able to attach a resume to my application because my ED school (Duke) doesn’t allow them. Nor would I be able to list it in my activities section because I’ve already used the 10 slots and you can only write 150 character descriptions. Wondering how I would include this award in my application. Thanks in advance!
As you stated, you can list non academic awards in your EC list. Maybe go back and look at your descriptions and get the word count down. Otherwise, you can use one of the 5 Academic Awards/honors spaces, but typically I’d list the academic ones first. The app as a whole is meant to showcase your achievements, so order them wisely but make use of the space they are giving you. Of course conventional wisdom says don’t use all 10 EC spaces, that that’s overkill. But my 2 students did, and were none the worse for it.
My college counselor had very similar sentiments in regards to all 10 EC spaces being used as overkill, so I’ll follow your advice by trimming my activity list. I’ll also see if I can trim down the word count and fit the award somewhere in my EC list. Thanks for the advice!
yeh, it goes something like…Leadership position…description…award
Founder President LEO club >2000 vision screenings & diabetes education; Top Volunteer Award