Others, however, may be strong students and/or class leaders and yet have little or nothing to list in the Honors/Awards section. This is fairly straightforward. . The larger the pool of potential applicants, the more impressive your award will seem. The Common App, however, announced a change in their application earlier this week. by Amy Alexander, former admissions officer at Yale University. We’ll let you know what your chances are at your dream schools — and how to improve your chances! In addition to her work for PrepScholar, Hayley is the author of Museum Hack's Guide to History's Fiercest Females. The 5 Strategies You Must Be Using to Improve 4+ ACT Points, How to Get a Perfect 36 ACT, by a Perfect Scorer. When she was a teacher, Hayley's students regularly scored in the 99th percentile thanks to her passion for making topics digestible and accessible. The Common App Activities Section is an opportunity to demonstrate to the Common App colleges your talents, skills, and specific examples of extracurricular activities you’ve participated in over the last few years. For instance, if you receive a varsity letter for basketball, you should list it under your basketball entry in the Activities section. Students should spend time filling out this important part of the application. So using the example above, our completed Common App activity section would look like this when it's printed: A few other Common App activity tips: Make sure you click the “Preview” button at the top of the screen when you finish this section. The Common App, Analyzed: 5 Successful Activity Entries Explained, A Guide to the Citizenship Section of the Common App (Can I Still Get Into College if I’m Undocumented? Use your character limit to show why the award was important. Commended Student and Semifinalist should be listed at the state level, while Finalist and Scholar should be listed at the National level. Get the latest articles and test prep tips! Want to build the best possible college application? They can ACT Writing: 15 Tips to Raise Your Essay Score, How to Get Into Harvard and the Ivy League, Is the ACT easier than the SAT? For example, if you received an award for your performance in Latin at your high school, you might list it as “Marcus Jones Award — awarded to a junior for excellence in Latin.”. 50 characters for position/leadership position and organization name. In addition to the dreaded 650-word personal statement (a.k.a., Common App Essay) and college-specific supplemental essays, your child will have to complete the Common App Activities section. You will also be asked to designate the level of recognition: School, State/Regional, National, or International. A school award indicates that the students in your high school were eligible; a state or regional award means that people in your state, beyond just your school, could have won; national refers to honors students in your country could have received; and an international award is any honor for which the candidate pool spans more than one country. The Common Application specifies that the awards you list should be “related to your academic achievements.” This means that if you received non-academic awards, they should be included in your activities section instead. The “Honors” section of the Common Application is every ambitious student’s dream: a space made specifically for you to list the fruits of your hard work and effort in high school. Check out our top-rated graduate blogs here: © PrepScholar 2013-2018. Our free chancing engine takes into account your GPA, test scores, extracurriculars, and other data to predict your odds of acceptance at over 500 colleges across the U.S. We’ll also let you know how you stack up against other applicants and how you can improve your profile. The larger the pool of potential applicants, the more impressive your award will seem. An Awards section needs to be an accurate account of your lifetime accomplishments. . For example, if you won a national saxophone competition and have been selected for All-State Band and All-State Jazz Band, as well as performed at Carnegie Hall, you may want to include the honor you deem most significant in the Honors section. In the Common App, this section is meant for academic honors. I'm a Natl Merit Semifinalist but also have more awards that I don't know if it would be better for me to put. If you won money, say so! A Comprehensive Guide. That’s the only way to really tell whether your responses fit in the spaces provided. This section is intended to gather any data points that are critical to evaluating the context of a given student’s application. A national-level award means that students in your country could qualify for that award. If you were selected as one out of 15,000, own it! Headed to an interview soon? You should designate it as a school-level award because the pool from which you are chosen for the club is comprised of students at your high school. If there is a monetary award tied to the honor, mention the exact figure as well, such as “Smith Library Scholarship for Excellence in Writing — $5,000.” You should also list non-monetary prizes associated with the honor. Discover schools, understand your chances, and get expert admissions guidance — for free. However, if the award is particular to your school, or is something that may not be self-explanatory, you may need to describe it a bit more. 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