<p>I was wondering how well the adcoms know about these things, or should my GC write a bit about it?</p>
<p>Why i'm asking this is because there doesn't seem much fuss about them in the US, as where here getting an international prize is the biggest possible thing you can do in high-school. You even get to attend 2 universities for free, without any other requirements.</p>
<p>some schools (like MIT for example) will actually recruit you if you do really well in Olympiads, which ticks me off a little b/c I haven't done any huge academic endeavors. but yeah some schools really like that; they know you'd be a prime candidate to do undergrad research</p>