<p>My school gives awards to juniors every year like the Bausch and Lomb award, U of Rochester Humanities award, etc. They generally try to space them out among students so no one gets more than one or two. This year, they gave the Humanities award to a girl who not only didn't take any AP classes so far, but also has incidents (plural) of cheating on her record. However, she is a nice girl and teachers love her. Does your school give out awards fairly?</p>
<p>At our school, we give out little cheap certificates which really serve no purpose. When something is given to you on a little piece of paper, it doesn't really make you want to put it on something like a resume or college app. Anyways, we have the regular ol' honor roll awards. The school also gives out awards to people that had previously done something worth recognizing (ie science fair, leadership conventions...). The only awards that the school has to decide on to give to students are the department awards: English, History, Math, Science, Arts... The teachers are basically just asked to pick 1 student from each class period that they teach who has been the best student. Since the awards at our school don't really mean much, I've never really thought about if the school gave awards out fairly. So far, I think the teachers just pick who ever they like. I'll keep an eye out though as out awards ceremony is this upcoming monday.</p>
<p>my school has this award ceremony at the end of the year. i personally think its unfair because they don't give out prizes to everyone that deserves it. for example, they have history+english prizes for underclassmen, but not math and science. well, i was pretty disappointed</p>
<p>I really hate the way out school does awards. Basically instead of applauding the students with a passion in one area, they take 10 or so students and disperse the awards amongst them. These students are not necessarily the academically strongest, but basically the "smart" ones that are also incredibly good athletes. Those of us with a real passion for something who dedicate a significant portion of our time to it don't get any credit, it's the people that are jack-of-all-trades types that get all the awards. I believe there were around 40 awards but only like 12 recipients. So, almost 4 awards per person. </p>
<p>I came away with nothing, although I deserved the writing award for sure - I don't want the rest of them, but I do want the writing award. The people they gave it to were the top 3 students in our class, none of which are exceptional writers. But because I'm not one of the top 10%, I don't get even looked at. The exact same thing happens with all the language honor societies, cum laude, etc. They pick the top 4 or so students from each class and just flood them with recognition, and noone else gets anything.</p>
<p>Wow at my school... apparently they do it based on GPA and we don't have weighted grades, so really I have one of the highest Gpa's if you would weigh it in my class, but since I've taken the hardest classes in my grade, I have lower grades, but i guess that's too genious for my school...... o well... awards really aren't that meaningful anywway, it's only high school..... i personally made my own "super smart kid" award haha.. but yea it's just slightly dissapoointing.. also because like people end up geting multiple awards like 2 people got 3 awards and there are only like 20? i't doesn't make any sense</p>
<p>Let's say that there are 50 awards to be handed out. Approximately 20 would be given to our valedictorian. Then, in an attempt to be fair, the remaining 30 would be distributed around the top 10% or so of students. This basically ignores the accomplishments of the rest of the top ten and makes them feel even more overshadowed than usual by our valedictorian, who, to be perfectly fair, is an amazing kid.</p>
<p>Nope. They need to weigh certain awards. They use straight averages in a certain subject to determine the award for that subject. What they need to do is weight so that the smarter people actually get the awards. You can be getting 100s in a normal class while a genius gets 95s in AP Calc. Guess who the award goes to? The kid with the 100s. Bad system.</p>
<p>At my school, they have one award for each credit course. I think that's a great way to do it, because it means that while the kid who excels in IB Higher Level Math gets recognized, the kid who bumped it up and actually tried in Social Studies 13 gets an award too (the 13/14 level courses are for the "academically challenged"). They also give out awards for the option courses - sports performance, foods, design studies, choir. </p>
<p>Then, after all the course awards, they do the major awards. These require both a teacher nomination and a resume review by the guidance councellors. These awards include things like "Best Male and Female Citizenship for Grade 10" or "Best Design Studies Student" or "Most Oustanding Grade 12 Science Student" or "Most Oustanding Grade 11". The great thing is that there are enough of these awards and they do make sure that they are spread out... with a school of 2000 students, you can't give everything to one person! Also, there are usually 40ish IB grads every year, and the top 10 among them definetly deserve a truck load of awards each. To be valedictorian, you need to be in the top 5% academically, present a speech to the grad committee, get interviewed by the admin, and have a resume review done by the gc's.</p>
<p>That was only the academic awards. My school also has special nights for music awards, math contest awards, and athletic awards. On the last day of the school year at the end of june, there is also an honor society banquet... if you qualify, you can go. You need an 80% average (we don't have letter grades, but I'd guess that 85% is an A) with at least one IB class, one second science or one second language (no mark lower than 70%). With only 300 honor society students out of 2000 at the school, this shows what it's really like to go to school here (Alberta - no grade inflation!).</p>
<p>Every year there is a schoolwide recognition assembly that recognizes accomplishments throughout the year, mainly athletic ones. Then there is Senior Awards Night which is composed of school awards and small scholarships. There are awards for each department, and those are based on which student has taken the most courses in that department and then if that does not determine it, it goes to whoever has the highest grades in those classes. I think this is a pretty fair way of going about it. We also have other awards like distinguished honor roll, national honor society recognition, national merit scholar recognition, etc. </p>
<p>The other small sum scholarships were pretty well distributed. A lot for athletics and for music. Some were also for good citizenship and leadership. About 75% of the students in my class got some kind of award. (we only have about 100 kids in the class).</p>
<p>A lot of the same people got some of the big scholarships ($1000+), but these were based on need, and the people that got them really needed them, so I don't think anyone begrudged that.</p>
<p>Thank god my school doesn't give out awards. It seems like such unneccessary stress. so superfluous...</p>
<p>My school gives out awards at the end of the year and they are certificates for basically every type of class we offer, plus important scholarships/recognitions, etc. There is also a trophy winner in each subject area. I dont quite understand how it works. There was a girl who got a science certificate without taking a science class that year... and i dont think they take into consideration any extracurriculars, only classes taken at OUR school because there is someone who is much stronger in math in our senior class than the one that the math department chose... its kinda messed up, but oh well. A lot of it is being close to teachers it seems like...</p>
<p>I do like one thing however. the awards ceremony only has one category for athletics. They put so much emphasis on athletics at our school. I don't see how our losing football team gets money but our phenomenal (not me, anyways) debate team gets nothing, and i mean nothing. No support, no funding, no recognition. But the losing football team... We have to pull students out of class to recognize them... sigh... sorry, that was kinda off topic. Oh well, the rant made me feel better</p>
<p>We have no rewards at all.</p>
<p>Yeah, our student of the year award went to an athlete who's never taken honors or AP, and is horribly rude to other people but sucks up majorly to her teachers and coaches, who also vote. She also got athlete of the year. They might as well combine the award.</p>