I would like to know which award would be more advantageous for top schools like MIT or Ivy league: A project competition award or an olympiad medal?
For instance, would an applicant having an international olympiad medal like IMO, IPho Silver etc. be superior to an applicant having an international project competition award like Intel or EUCYS?
read this:
it is true regardless of the name of the college-
US admissions are Holistic, and are not a race that awards acceptances more often to students who win elite awards.
@menloparkmom Thanks for your answer. Yes, I am fully aware that all US universities especially MIT follows policies of holistic admission but it is very clear that an international award helps your application a lot especially if you are an international applicant.
Main point is, especially for international students, international olympiad medals are somewhat required to get into top notch universities(although you can definitely get in without one) due to the extremely competitive applicant pool. Therefore, I would like to restate my question again. Which international distinction would gain more attention?
OP
read this carefully-
"There is nothing, literally nothing, that in and of itself will get you in to MIT.
For example:
A few years ago, we did not admit a student who had created a fully-functional nuclear reactor in his garage.
Think about that for a second.
Now, most students, when I tell them this story, become depressed. After all, if the kid who built a freakin’ nuclear reactor didn’t get in to MIT, what chance do they have?
But they have it backwards. In fact, this story should be incredibly encouraging for most students. It should be liberating. Why? Because over a thousand other students were admitted to MIT that year, and none of them built a nuclear reactor!
I don’t mean to discourage anything from pursuing incredible science and technology research on their own. If you want to do it, DO IT. But don’t do it because you think it’s your ticket to MIT. And that applies to everything you do - classes, SATs, extracurriculars.
There is no golden ticket."
Neither will be more advantageous than the other. While they will help your application immensely, they are still very far off from a guaranteed acceptance.
Keep in mind that these achievements are incredibly difficult to achieve.
I would just go with whatever you like best. You’ll find more enjoyment in the hours of preparation for either the exam or for the project.
@rdeng2614 Ok, thank you. I know the joy of preparing a project and ,as you stated, it is incredibly wonderful.
Btw, since I am an international, I don’t know how competitions are viewed exactly. For example, is having a prize in EUCYS as prestigious as having a prize in Intel ISEF?(Both are prestigious international competitions)