<p>My son achieved Black Belt level in Tae Kwon Do. He is trying to list it as a non-academic distinction on his MIT application, but then he needs to check off one of school, regional, state, national, international, and that doesn't really fit. It was awarded at his TKD school level, but it's (I think) and international standard. What do you think makes sense for that one?</p>
<p>American TKD has a reputation for making it fairly easy to get the first black belt but difficult to advance in the black belt hierarchy - but the standards are up to the school, so it’s hard to generalize. Would you consider a college degree with merit grades a local, regional, state, national or international accomplishment?</p>
<p>I wd call it international for reasons you said. Most honors dont clearly fall in those categories so adcoms must be used to this issue.</p>
<p>Actually his school made it easy to get up to high brown, and then started holding him to a real standard for black belt. So it took him 2 years to advance from high brown to black, and it was a genuine accomplishment, IMO.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what the relevance of the college degree question is, but it would presumably be “school level”. However I would say that something like an IB degree or distinction may be an international standard (I don’t know much about the IB program, but it seems to have international standards)</p>
<p>I would check either “school” or “national” standard - national looks better. 
International is too strong because martial arts standards vary quite a bit between countries.</p>
<p>I was thinking that “international” would seem to overstate things. Do you have to check something off? Could he just leave that blank since it doesn’t really apply?</p>
<p>I would either check “school” or leave it blank.</p>
<p>The form lets him click more than one, so he clicked both “school” and “national” since it is awarded at the school level, but based on a national standard. I’m sure the recipients will understand no matter what he checks.</p>