How Valuable are National Academic Awards?

Applying to College
1

Hey guys,

As many of you have seen my chance threads before (sorry about that), I’ve decided to start branching out posts into different categories.

My dilemma is this: While I am a high-achieving student with many school-wide awards, I do not have any national academic awards. This is because my school does not have any quiz bowl teams, clubs, organizations, etc. as our class sizes are very small (75 to 100 kids). Because of our school’s small size, no one has had luck getting enough people to join the high school quiz bowl team. But, despite this, many kids of the class of 2016 got into very prestigious schools. Our school does not offer AP classes so we cannot get any AP awards either.

I plan on writing some short stories and entering them in some statewide, regional, and national competitions, but I’m not really expecting much. I also have some state wide awards for my sport and I am going to compete in regionals in three weeks (and hopefully qualify for nationals). But, again, I don’t have any national academic awards.

So how much will this hurt my application, if at all? I would think that if I justify why I never competed in quiz bowl, some colleges would understand. Then again, I don’t want to be making up excuses. Thoughts?

2

Why are you fixated on Quiz Bowl? It is just one of many possible ECs (in or out of school) that you could participate in.

3

For argument’s sake, let’s say roughly 24K students enroll in the Ivies + Stanford + MIT (and YES I know there are many great schools outside these ten I’ve arbitrarily chosen). Do you think each of them won a national award? Are there even 24K national competitions?

Your goal is to be excellent. Sometimes that will lead to national level recognition. Often it won’t. Don’t stress about this – it’s a fool’s errand.

4

@T26E4 good to know haha

5

It’s clearly possible to be accepted to good schools without academic awards. Don’t stress.