National or International Competition?

Applying to College
1

During my sophomore year, I participated in a team-based engineering competition (I’m choosing to leave out the name for privacy reasons) and placed in the top 10. The competition is open to high schoolers around the world but probably 90%-95% of teams are from the U.S. Would it be unethical to mark it as an international competition on the Common App since so few international teams choose to participate?

Thanks in advance!

2

Why not just list the name of the competition on your application? If it is a significant one, colleges will already be familiar with it.

Does the competition have a web page where they describe themselves as “international”? If yes, it would be fine for you to describe it as such. Otherwise, leave the fluff out of the app.