<p>In my school, they’re considered a big deal b/c only one person per grade gets an award for each subject. And the prizes are actual books, not just certificates, and the whole department works together to decide who to give them to.
But in a lot of other threads I’ve read, people disregard them as pointless.</p>
<p>I’m happy to have gotten one no matter what and to have my hard work recognized but I want to know if it will help with anything else (i.e. college, duh).</p>
<p>I don’t know if they are all BS. Your school’s award obviously seems to have some weight. </p>
<p>My high school doesn’t give awards because it encourages more competition in an already competitive environment (whatever). But, my middle school did, and they gave out an award exactly like yours - in the sense that one person per team got them. A grade was divided into 4 teams. Then, one person for each subject for each team got one. They were actually pretty good measures of a student’s abilities in the subject. I got the top award for the grade and one in history. However, there were BS awards to, such as the “would’ve been a great couple, but now we’ll never know.” I got that. (Funny because both the guy and myself weren’t there to receive it because we ditched the assembly).</p>
<p>But, anyways, I’m going off in too many tangents. If you want it to help in college admissions, why don’t you see if one of your teachers will mention it in a recommendation. Since they picked you, and your award has weight to it, it would make sense that they make it credible by mentioning that only one student gets it, etc.</p>
<p>Well, it definitely depends school to school. Some public schools (like the one right by me) gives out an award to the top 10 in each subject in each grade…including like weight lifting (yeah…)</p>
<p>my school doesn’t give out any like “school” awards, it’s mostly like national things. Ie, national latin exam, national french exam…we do have a science prize though for the top 10 girls in biology, top 4 in chemistry…don’t know what that is…but yeah, I second the advice to get rec’s from the teacher…I got the chem award (my chem teacher picked it!) so I’m def getting one from her</p>
<p>I think it depends on the type of awards. I mean if you have the highest average in a subject in school , I think that is important… but then as I said, it all depends. Half of the awards at our school are crap, so I don’t really pay attention to them. I fold all of mine and throw them away. Well actually, I have no clue where they are. Maybe I didn’t throw them away. haha</p>
<p>College and University Book Awards to high school juniors mean a great deal in my S’s school. Because only the highest ranking students receive the book awards with the highest being Harvard Book Award.</p>
<p>our school gives out one award per class. the only catch is, to prevent from 2 people stealing all the awards, they have a rule that you can only win 1 award. It usually works out that the smartest kids, who would most likely steal all the awards if they could, win a very hard AP class, and normal classes like foreign language, religion, and non-ap math go to the “smart” but not top 5 in the class kids.</p>
<p>We have one book award from I forgot where. And one scholarship award as well. Those are for juniors.
And then there are subject awards given to whomever. The limit is two awards per person in my school which is pointless because there are always two people who collectively win four awards and there are only 2 or three left for everyone else. But they make everyone go to the ceremony. It is very much hated.</p>