<p>I keep hearing about national honors for college admissions. What are some of these and how do students become active in these programs?</p>
<p>I come from a small farming town so I don't get filled in on too much.</p>
<p>"National honors" come from national (and international) academic competitions and testing recognition programs. Here are a few.</p>
<p>-- The most well-known is the National Merit Scholarship competition that you enter automatically when you take the PSAT in the fall of your junior year. See
National</a> Merit Scholarship Corporation - Entering the Competitions for more information. You must score in the top 50,000 (out of 1.5 million test takers) to get recognition, top 15,000 (approximately) to be considered as a finalist for scholarships.</p>
<p>-- You can earn various levels of recognition by taking and scoring well on AP tests. See AP:</a> Scholar Awards</p>
<p>-- There are various national mathematics competitions. Perhaps the most well-known are sponsored by the MAA. See MAA</a> American Mathematics Competitions - AMC</p>
<p>-- Same for the sciences. One well-known competition is Intel</a> Science Talent Search (STS)</p>
<p>-- There are various ways, team and individual, to participate in Future Problem Solvers competitions, FPSPI</a> Coaches and Students, but all involve thinking about approaches to rising social issues</p>
<p>-- One well-known multi-intelligence competition is Welcome</a> to Destination ImagiNation!</p>
<p>-- There are other competitions in other subjects, such as foreign languages. Perhaps others will post more suggestions.</p>
<p>Sorry there is not much more I know about competitions other than what has already been stated...would book awards be considered national (since everyone gets them)?</p>
<p>bump!
10chars</p>
<p>Might the Olympiads be considered applicable? (The subject olympiads.)
USABO, USACO, etc.?
These are competitions on specific areas- I just learned about these recently, so someone else may be able to provide a more comprehensive explanation. Google them, if you want.</p>
<p>Yea, here's where you can find more information about the Olympiads - for Math, Descartesz already posted something (the AMC series leads up to the USA Mathematics Olympiad, and further). There's the USA Biology Olympiad - USABO</a> index page, the US National Chemistry Olympiad - Chemistry</a> Olympiad, The USA Physics Olympiad - 2008</a> Physics Olympics, The USA Computing Olympiad - Programming</a> Contest, and the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad (which selects for an US team) - NACLO</a> 2008 . All of these Olympiads also give a chance to represent the US team at an International Competition, so I guess that's could be kind of like an international honor too.</p>
<p>would someone without national/international awards stand a chance at an ivy league if they had a high gpa, most rigorous courses, great SAT, community involvement...?</p>
<p>yes, they'd definately stand a chance.</p>
<p>heh. don't worry about national awards. Having an OUTSTANDING academic record (including SATs, SAT IIs, GPA, rigorous courses) already gives you enough recognition for admittance and acceptance at even the most prestigious universities in the nation! After all, the academic record is the #1 consideration for most if not all universities in the admissions process. So, be sure to keep those grades up. </p>
<p>Source: College Board College Search</p>
<p>Do you mean winning a national honor, or being top 5 in the nation in a respected activity?</p>
<p>There would probably be only 600-1000 kids in the nation w/ top 5 for a activity. It would be very very impressive, but you don't have to win a competition to prove that you're accomplished. You can be published, or have accomplished a very big feat, such as making an organization. </p>
<p>If you mean a national level honor, like USAMO/USABO/USNCO, National Merit, etc etc, then it's still very prestigious.</p>