<p>If you win the state championship/national championship/ many awards on the national level?
How heavily is it weighed by colleges?</p>
<p>Many colleges solely admit based on transcript/test scores. For them, DEBATE has zero value.</p>
<p>For others, it has value – how much? It’s hard to say other than you want to be able to present yourself as an achiever outside the classroom as much as inside of it. No one can say “it’ll give you a 18.7% boost in overall chances”</p>
<p>Is it good to have honors/championships? Sure. Better than someone without them. My daughter is an all-league, all-district cheerleader. Will she be much more valued than her teammate who doesn’t get to put this on her application? Is her sports achievement more valuable than your debate achievement? Who can say? No one can attribute a numerical “value” to it.</p>
<p>Some colleges have debate teams, so a state/national championship would be a good hook there. Other schools’ admissions offices will recognize the value of the research and presentation skills honed in debate. It’s going to be a bigger plus at a LAC that makes admissions decisions holistically rather than a large state university that auto admits the top 10% based on class rank. Most of the high school debaters I know had great test scores; some did not have great GPA’s (lack of motivation in one case but more typically too much time devoted to debate at the expense of other classes).</p>