The 2022-2023 Common App officially opened on August 1st!

Here are some tips I've been sharing with my students
to help them create their strongest honors and awards section.

  1. Think broadly about what honors and awards can be listed. 

The Common App allows five academic honors and awards to be listed, and applicants should try to list five if possible. 

These can include mock trial, debate or Model UN recognition, arts or music competitions, math competitions, Science Olympiad or science fair recognition, scholastic art and writing awards, robotics awards, national language exams, subject honor societies, national honor society, school awards including class, departmental or school-wide academic awards, etc.

These can also include team awards, but make sure it's clear that the award wasn't achieved individually.

2. List awards in order of impressiveness!

Don't, for example, start the list with "National Honor Society" -- a school award that many students will include -- if you have more unique honors or regional/state, national or international honors.

Also, quantify the award if that makes it more impressive -- you might want to include the dollar amount of an award, or the number of competitors.

3. Use the 100 characters allowed to describe the award or honor if colleges won’t be familiar with it.

You don't have to explain what a National Merit Commended Scholar is -- all admissions readers will be familiar with Merit Scholarship honors.

But you might need to explain less well-known awards:

"Galileo Award - given to the junior with the highest STEM GPA."

Here's how Snow White (a client who always listens to me 🙂) described the first three honors on her application:

  • Fairest of Them All Award - best mock trial judge, awarded to 1 of 5000 students in all the land

  • National Merit Semi-Finalist

  • Top Botanist Prize -- awarded by school for research paper on poison apples

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