@262mom – I should really open the CA to see how much space there is to report national awards. My feeling is that if a student does not have other national awards, I don’t like leaving blank spaces, so student may as well include it. If one of a few national awards, perhaps list it last. I don’t know that we should assume that the AO will drill down enough to add up the # of AP tests taken and then translate that into AP Scholar (or whatever the designation is).
I agree that it is a bit of fluff, but could be useful for a student who attends a less well-known or less rigorous HS. Demonstrates the student’s mastery of the material at a nationally recognized level???
I agree with your assessment: can’t hurt, might not help, but no real harm.
I wonder if anyone bothers listing NHS in that section? Or Language National Honor Societies?
I see no reason why you cant list AP scholars if you want. If you think about it The National Honor Society, The National English Honor societies and all the other Honor societies that kids get into in high school based on their grades is basically the same thing.
@jmek15 I have been at the campus many times over the last year for my dd’s track meets. I haven’t paid attention as a prospective student/parent. The school is about 10 minutes from the airport, U of R and downtown Rochester.
AP awards are an odd issue because anyone who has one at the time they are submitting college apps is likely to get a better one by the time they graduate (unless you are a National AP Scholar). State AP Scholars are really odd in that you cannot use them for a college app because they are not determined until at least July of your senior year and after you have selected a college (long after you applied to them).
There are actually lots of national type awards. National ______ Bee, Olympiads, national _____ contests (my 2014 S was an honorable mention in a national science contest with about 10,000 entrants, 3 winners, and 20 honorable mentions), national exams, etc.
The types of national awards that @Mom2aphysicsgeek mentions are part of why it seems like fluff to list AP scholar awards, but it also makes sense to me that it probably doesn’t hurt (unless a student has so many more substantial awards that there isn’t room to list the AP one - that would be a nice problem to have!) and could help, maybe in particular for a student from a less well-known high school, as @CT1417 pointed out.
We are definitely short in the ‘national/regional/city/household’ awards category. Just wasn’t on the radar for D17. I think this is the most glaring thing missing from her app. She won ‘Most Likely To Attend Harvard’ paper plate award at her LAX banquet last year. Maybe we can put that on there… =))
D will get National AP Scholar this summer before her senior year. But is that really a National award, when it is automatic? She probably will not put in CA, but on her resume. She will self report her scores instead.
@SincererLove – Interestingly, I would not think to have my son include AP Scholar on his resume, as his resume is already far too long. (He created what he calls a technical resume—his own idea.) He does have more awards than can be listed on one sheet of paper.
Older son did not have many awards so we grasped at whatever straw we could find for filling out the CA.
OK, 'Bama folks. I am really struggling with UA’s application, believe it or not. We submitted the app and paid the fee. Got the CWID. Now if I go to MyBama and click “Check My Application Status”, I see an app for ‘Fall 2017’ listed, but if I go in there…some of the ‘stuff’ is not filled out! There are blanks. Can you change your application? I’m wondering if I had multiple browsers open, and somehow it over-wrote what was there?
And, how can you tell if scores were received. (I’m college edjumacated, it really shouldn’t be this hard).
@STEM2017 Congrats to your son! @2muchquan We have 2 blanks as well for ACT scores and transcript. I even called ACT this am. They were received last week and I am just guessing that they have not been uploaded yet. The transcript will be another month as least. I even called our GC office to check about when the transcripts will be ready!
@2muchquan - For some reason BAMA have made it difficult. I had a hard time figuring it out myself. I did not go back and look at the application. I just checked to make sure it and the ACT & transcripts had made it. Are you sure you haven’t started a new application instead of looking at the submitted one?
When you go to check app , it said start a new app and when I clicked on that it had the app submitted listed then if I clicked on that it listed that the scores & transcript were recvd. Also you can email them DS did before I figured it out and they checked it for him.
BTW Ole Miss still doesn’t have his ACT score and they were sent at the same time to UA. Ugh.
S will not have a lot of national honors/awards either. I am not really too worried about it. D didn’t have many national honors but had no trouble with college acceptances and merit awards. Our HS school does not participate in the NHS, does not have AP-specific classes (and doesn’t recommend the kids take an AP test if they may not get at least a 3), etc. Each kid has to “run their own race”. Our kids will do fine with or without a full list.
I just read that the ACT is getting harder for the Math and Science sections. Just wonderful… I hope that DS17’s 32 is good enough at UA.
Oh and I just checked Georgia Southern already has his ACT scores and I ordered them AFTER I ordered Ole Miss’s. So now I’m starting to wonder if something went wrong when sending to Ole Miss.
Transcripts and scores…what is the benefit to sending pre-application if your application is in far in advance of any due dates? Are these all for rolling admissions and just to speed up overall response time or ? Just curious.
Common App. I thought the app fully reset/rolled over on 8/1 but it sounds like lots of kids are working on it already. I know account data rolls over, are kids doing more than that or waiting until after 8/1? We’ve yet to create an account but I’ve asked S to do it this week.
So far DS has only done rolling apps. But he will do the common app and he has already sent the scores so that once he submitts the app they can match it up quicker.
I think that you can fill in some of the personal info on the CA and it will not be go away, but other info needs to wait for the 8/1 date. Not completely sure though.