I’m not saying that I only care about the prestige of activities, but I’m just curious about the prestige of some of the activities below:
-Qualification for the Kentucky Tournament of Champions
-Making the IOI Team for Country
-Making the WSDC Team for Country
-ISEF Finalist
I would appreciate your input.
Thank you,
realtrophies222
The best event for your app is the one you care most about, and potentially perform the best in.
Yes I know, but I’m curious about the relative prestige of each of these.
The prestige is based on how you feel about them, how it comes across in your writing about them. Listing them means little.
I am aware of that. But I’m just wondering from an objective point of view, how much these achievements are worth.
“from an objective point of view, how much these achievements are worth.”
To the rest of us, from an objective point of view, they are worth nothing.
From your point of view, they are worth what you got out of them. Winning pretty much anything requires a degree of concentration and effort over time. It gives a person something to strive for.
Going to an academically challenging university sounds exciting and romantic to a high school student who thinks about the name and the “prestige”. However, once you are there, you are faced with actual homework assignments and actual papers to write and actual books to read. For academically challenging universities the work jumps at you faster than at other schools – the professors expect more from their students. What from a distance looks like “prestige”, once you get close looks like “hard work” and long nights. If you can’t keep up it can get rather painful.
By the way, when you get out in the real world, accomplishing great things is largely something that you notice after it is over – you look back at age 60-something and think “my, I actually did help build that”. At the time again it looks like work that needs to be done and/or hard problems that need to be solved, probably with apparently stupid or annoying people getting in the way.
As such, the achievements that you have accomplished in high school are hopefully just the beginning of the hint regarding what you need to do to be successful down the line.