Should I put National AP Scholar in the award section of the Common App, or will that look like resume padding? I have other awards but am also proud of this one.
I asked both my kids to list it since it shows a lot of hard work to get 8 4s and 5s.
My kid didn’t list it since it felt like resume padding. I’m assuming you are listing the APs you took and the scores, so it’s kind of redundant. I’m not sure what the purpose of these awards is other than to entice kids to sign up for AP exams they might not otherwise have taken. But if you don’t have anything else you’d rather list, I don’t think it would hurt if you want to put it in.
@mathyone - Why would you care if it is resume padding? It is an award that they won and entrance to top schools is competitive. It is also a national award. If my kid has 107 awards when he applies (he won’t) all of them will go on his resume. Why would you leave any out?
Edited to add: I asked above why you would care if it is resume padding but a more interesting question is what is resume padding? Including all awards won doesn’t seem like it is padding anything. It is simply listing an award that was won.
You don’t submit a resume. It’s been a few years but if I recall there are 10 spots for awards on the common app. I guess you could put it under additional information.
Sometimes listing everything can dilute the impact of what’s important. IMO. In my daughter’s case, she had exceeded the requirements for that “award” anyhow. I guess I feel an automatic “award” isn’t much of an award. If your school gives an award to everyone with a 3.9+ GPA and you list GPA 4.0, and then “won high school principal’s award given to students with GPA over 3.9”, listing that award doesn’t inform, and doesn’t impress any more than stating the GPA. It simply provides redundant information that tells nothing more about the student. So it feels a bit fillerish.
Thank you everyone for your responses!
@mathyone I believe many top colleges let us submit a resume as part of the supplement?
@Proudpatriot I think the most common definition is filling a resume with “awards” or activities that aren’t really significant because there isn’t anything else to put on it
It is a national award and is more selective than NMSF since only about 4000 or 8000 (I calculated this number a couple of years ago but dont remember and it keeps going up each year) get it after 11th grade while there are 16,000 NMSFs nationwide.
The importance of awards in commonapp goes from national/international to state to district and most students will have very few national level awards to discuss. But if someone has things that sound lot better, by all means they can leave this out.
I did not list it for exactly the reason that @mathyone stated. I listed my AP scores, AO’s could figure it out if they so chose. At the end of the day, I’m not convinced that listing a AP Scholar award is really meaningful, but that’s just a personal opinion.
Just because a supplement can be added does not mean that a supplement should be added. You should ask an objective 3rd party (i.e. not your parents) if the supplements really adds anything additional to the application. If yes, great. If not, just know that although applicants will spend hours and hours crafting the perfect application, AO’s will spend about 15 minutes reading it, and more info will not result in more reading time. Sometimes the old adage applies: the thicker the file, the thicker the kid. Good luck.
D told me before about submitting resume too. I believe that she will have all her scores and National AP scholar on her resume. Therefore, she might not put that in Award section in CA.
I didn’t say it’s not a good achievement. It’s a fine achievement to complete a lot of APs and score well on the exams. I am just saying that to list it twice seems redundant to me.
As far as the “selectivity” goes, many students simply don’t have the opportunity to get it because of school scheduling and limits on AP enrollment. Also, students whose interest lie outside the areas covered by AP classes won’t tend to get it. My second kid won’t because she’s interested in writing and there are only the 2 English APs available, whereas STEM kids have a lot more AP classes available. Only seniors are allowed to enroll in AP English lit in our school, so there’s really only one class in her area of interest. She could easily get it if she wanted to, but she’d rather take writing than an AP she is less interested in next year. So by the end of next year, she’ll have 7 APs and miss the arbitrary cutoff for this “award”. But I wouldn’t be surprised if other students would make a different choice because the college board decided to create these “awards”. I guess I’m not a fan of these “awards” because it encourages students to load on more APs which may not be the best thing for their personal goals. Her sister got it because she likes science so she had more AP classes.
National Merit should be listed because it’s based upon PSAT scores which unlike the AP scores are not provided elsewhere in the application, so it does provide additional information on the applicant. Also, while I expect the Admissions officers will look at the list of APs and scores and can easily see more information in that list than is given by “National AP scholar”, I don’t expect that they have memorized what the PSAT cutoff scores are for every state and so even if you did provide the PSAT score, it wouldn’t necessarily tell them how you stacked up in your state, which NMSF does. Colleges explicitly say that they don’t care that much about AP scores or about having more than 8 or so, which you hardly need to have completed by junior year, but they do all like to publicize how many National Merit scholars they have.
FWIW, my daughter listed NMSF and not National AP scholar.