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How good do the following awards look on an application, especially to HYPS? I guess my question is are they worth doing/would placing well be the kind of thing that could put a relatively solid app into the accept pile:
Dupont Challenge
Scholastic Art Award
Scholastic Writing Award
NCTE Writing

By Encomium (Encomium) on Wednesday, October 06, 2004 - 11:32 pm: Edit

NCTE writing is awesome

By Pepperhead21 (Pepperhead21) on Thursday, October 07, 2004 - 01:22 am: Edit

colleges dont care much about awards...if you have them they are nice but frankly they could care less. However if they are prestigious or outstanding that will help a lot but you DEF won't get rejected on the basis of lacking awards. I think they just add that section to see how much you boast about yourself.

By Frogman9595 (Frogman9595) on Thursday, October 07, 2004 - 08:25 pm: Edit

BUMP

By Anovice (Anovice) on Friday, October 08, 2004 - 06:32 am: Edit

What about awards like most outstanding departmental award... they give it out once a year to one student in the school (of about 1400)and I've gotten it three times.

By Iwantyale (Iwantyale) on Friday, October 08, 2004 - 03:16 pm: Edit

I don't know. I just found out a week or so ago that I got the ncte, but I don't know how good it is.
Scholastic, it seems, is a very good award to have, but mostly for one of the portfolio awards ($10,000 for writing). However, you have to be a senior to enter for the portfolios, and you won't find out until well past Jan. 1, so I'm not sure it will make a difference.
I've never heard of the Dupont Challenge, so I can't say.
I would highly appreciate someone commenting on the ncte, because I'm still not quite sure about its value. I never even heard of it until I was selected to enter. I think there were 680-something winners this year, so it's certainly not like winning Intel.
Anyone else know?

By Iwantyale (Iwantyale) on Friday, October 08, 2004 - 03:32 pm: Edit

To add to that post, I'd like to say this:
Please don't do something just because you think it will get you into a certain school. The only awards I know of that count as automatic admits are so tough to obtain that you would probably require a great deal of PASSION for the area in order to win. If you're looking for an automatic acceptance letter, find something that you really love and pursue it with all the energy you can muster. It's far more likely that a person will earn something important this way than to just half-heartedly work on something you really don't care for at all.