<p>How important is the JCL on an app. to HYP et al? Do admissions officers esteem 1st place overall academic award at the national convention as high as intel, usamo, siemens, etc?</p>
<p>Do they treat Certamen (quiz bowl at jcl conventions) the same as Academic Decathlon and Reg. Quizbowl? For example, say you are team captain of the 1st place national team, or maybe you're the MVP (most points earned for your team). How about high scores? How do they treat high scores on certain tests? </p>
<p>Now, how about state convention? Is it a good hook to get overall academic/certamen awards at state?</p>
<p>Personally, I think it’s not as prestigious because it’s more unknown, but definitely not something to scoff at. More than a thousand of the best latinists in the country attend NJCL and hundreds of the best in your state attend your local JCL convention. My concern, personally, is whether all the awards won should all be listed or whether one should select only the best of one’s finishes. Being on your state certamen team is great, especially if you are captain, or if you can provided context on how difficult it is to make said team. Regionally, results at local state certamina are also a plus… (I’m adding my 2nd place from Level III )… </p>
<p>Because JCL convention awards are more unknown, you have to put them into context… these are the hardest classics-related examinations known to man, where knowledge of the most minute obscurities is the only way to crack the top 10, especially in level IV which is highly competitive…</p>
<p>I participated in JCL only at a school/state level and included it in my application. I included wins in the scrapbook category because I was historicus for my school chapter but didn’t have any academic wins. I wouldn’t say that JCL got me into Harvard, but it was on my application and I did get into Harvard. </p>
<p>In the end, why not include it? No one can tell you how much admissions will weigh JCL awards, (though probably not as highly as USAMO/Siemens) but a national award of any type would be really impressive to me. You seem to be passionate about JCL, so talk about what it is, why you love it, and why your achievement in JCL is truly incredible.</p>
<p>Harvard knows about the JCL, but including a short explanation (<30 words) with your resume isn’t a bad idea. (As a JCLer, you should have enough awards to make attaching a resume worthwhile, especially because the CommonApp isn’t an easy format to fit the JCL into.) Harvard seems to end up with rather more JCLers than YP or S. The JCL isn’t like Intel, though, where the better you do at Certamen and tests, the higher your chances are. One of the two MVPs in upper last year got rejected from HYP and is going to one of the lower Ivies, for instance. I don’t think this year’s NJCL president is very good at Certamen, but he’s coming in the fall. Generally, Harvard seems to take one or two people who’ll be in Upper finals and owning the tests, and a few more who would get absolutely slaughtered at both of those but have other strengths. There are two from my state in the class of '14 who are generally in the second category. I didn’t make upper finals last year, but I was rather closer to the first category.</p>
<p>How prestigious state awards and state office is depend on the state. Texas is prestigious, for one example. I also come from a prestigious state, and usually one of our state officers goes to Harvard. A couple years back, it was the historian or parliamentarian or something: one of the less important positions. Everybody was surprised, but it was only one component of her strong-in-other-ways-too application.</p>
<p>To recap, JCL is a really good part of an application, but neither an MVP nor a national presidency guarantees anything. I could name you an MVP at a second-tier Catholic university, and a national president at a state school with a rank below 100 in USNWR. On the other hand, “only” achieving state office or “only” coming in fifth/sixth at Certamen can both bump in an application that is strong in other ways. (The second would be especially true if one were from, say, Nevada.)</p>
<p>This may have been too general to be helpful, but I’m trying to preserve both my own privacy and the privacy of my unwitting examples. Feel free to PM me for more information or advice.</p>
<p>Okay, so you recommend attaching a resume for JCL stuff? Because at last year’s VJCL convention, I got five awards top 10, this year I got like 15+ awards top 10 including best in shows and academic sweepstakes for my grade… Then there’s also all the outside jcl/acl/etc tests like medusa, nrce, nge, nle which I also have a lot of awards for… Should I only select the best finishes (I have enough where I can be selective in only putting 1st and 2nd place finishes)… hope colleges value this… in fact, since my state jcl convention is in nov and I am working to do really well, I have decided against applying EA to Harvard…</p>
<p>Heavens, child, don’t fail to apply early for that reason alone. You know that it’s common practice, if you receive a significant award in March, to send an update to all the colleges to which you have applied, right? Same logic applies here. I think the admissions committee will both understand that the convention hasn’t happened at the time you applied, when/if they look at your application before the convention, and be receptive to an update of your most significant awards if you send it ASAP afterwards.</p>
<p>Nitty-gritty. You should absolutely attach a resume. Mine was even the verboten two (full) pages long! (That’s because I included explanations of everything, especially art projects. They were brief, but they really expanded the length of the thing.) Make a narrative with your resume. One way to do that is to mostly limit yourself to the two-three subjects at which you most excel: say, history and geography. If you then got a random 4th place in mythology one year, don’t include it. Do include any 4th places in geography. This is to avoid a resume of unwieldy length. I would also include any language/grammar awards, whatever your specialty, because that’s the actual subject you’re studying. The other possible narrative is that you’re well-rounded, in which case my cut-off for what place is high enough to include would just be higher. (As you say, 1sts and 2nds.)</p>
)… </p>