<p>and how many people without significant awards are considered at top universities?</p>
<p>i have never achieved recognizable scores in usamo, usabo, or physics olympiad... i also have never achieved essay recognition or anything at all, for that matter.</p>
<p>how significant are these awards anyway? should i try to focus more time on trying to get these test qualification awards?</p>
<p>everything in college admissions is relative </p>
<p>if most kids applying to a school have awards then its important</p>
<p>if they dont then its not</p>
<p>and most kids at top tier universities have these awards...</p>
<p>being able to do the usamo is way impressive already. even a 0 is a recongnizable score...</p>
<p>and no, not most kids. Say there are 200 grads with Usamo (some are gr.9/10/11). There are like 2000 spots in harvard? so that's 1/10 if every single one goes to harvard.</p>
<p>blue</p>
<p>My son didn't receive any national/state/regional awards except NMF and AP Scholar. His only awards were school recognition awards (i.e. "Science Award," "Student Athlete").</p>
<p>He got into every college he applied at including Stanford early action and Regents at UCB, UCLA, UCSD.</p>
<p>I think it is great if you can win these national competitions, but if not, what else is unique and interesting about you?</p>
<p>that's the thing--not much. i doubt i can get some good leadership positions at school because leadership here is mostly a popularity contest. but i was hoping that if i studied enough this year and qualified that could count.</p>
<p>i can't think of ANYTHING, besides leadreship and awards, that could really, truly, significantly spice up somebody's college application. except for the essay, and then again, i don't want to rely wholly on that.</p>
<p>yeah, awards are for the most part fairly relative. if you have reasonable opportunities then of course if ur applying to top tier schools you should have awards (reasonable for example like you qualify for AIME assuming that ur school regularly offers AMC 10/12). its nothing to fixate over if you dont have reasonable opportunities readibly offered to you.</p>
<p>try to get as much leadership as you can. i dont know if this applies to you, but if you join the right clubs (typically clubs that revolve over objective things like academic clubs or sports along with some various other things) then its not unreasonable to get lots of leadership haha. something ive noticed at my school is that for these kinds of clubs, someone with an inferiority complex (lots of times the popular, undeserving kids haha) will realize that its prolly not in their best interest to try and get leadership in that club haha.</p>
<p>in the end, i still think the essays of an otherwise academically qualified student makes the biggest difference in trying to get into schools. i think that for these purposes that your extracurriculars are simply a basis for perspective in relation to the essays that you write.</p>