College Board National Recognition Awards

[Anonymous]

Are these helpful for college admissions or not really a big deal?

[Anonymous]

The award itself isn't necessarily impactful. However, there may be value in listing the award in the honors section of the application, as the award title may indicate that the student is an underrepresented minority by race or ethnicity.

I don't know about the rural one, which covers about half the high schools in the US, many of which are actually suburban.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are these helpful for college admissions or not really a big deal?

I think both things can be true. I’m having my son complete the application since it seems like it takes about 5 minutes. It’s not like Harvard will be impressed by it, but it’s something to put in the awards category if he doesn’t end up with much else.

[Anonymous]

Some schools give a little bit of $ for it. I think my son got $1,500 from a few schools for filling it out. It also determines eligibility for rural scholar programs which they seem to care about now.

[Anonymous]

It's a good shorthand for saying "I took a lot of AP classes and tests and did really well on most of them" if you don't want to list all the scores somewhere else on the app.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some schools give a little bit of $ for it. I think my son got $1,500 from a few schools for filling it out. It also determines eligibility for rural scholar programs which they seem to care about now.

Northeastern and Arizona offered a lot of $$$, $25k and $17.5k

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's a good shorthand for saying "I took a lot of AP classes and tests and did really well on most of them" if you don't want to list all the scores somewhere else on the app.

While it's possible to get a College Board National Recognition Program award with AP tests, most get the award for their PSAT score.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The award itself isn't necessarily impactful. However, there may be value in listing the award in the honors section of the application, as the award title may indicate that the student is an underrepresented minority by race or ethnicity.

I don't know about the rural one, which covers about half the high schools in the US, many of which are actually suburban.

College Board has gotten rid of the race and ethnicity awards! They recently announced.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a good shorthand for saying "I took a lot of AP classes and tests and did really well on most of them" if you don't want to list all the scores somewhere else on the app.

While it's possible to get a College Board National Recognition Program award with AP tests, most get the award for their PSAT score.

How do you know that? Or are you guessing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The award itself isn't necessarily impactful. However, there may be value in listing the award in the honors section of the application, as the award title may indicate that the student is an underrepresented minority by race or ethnicity.

I don't know about the rural one, which covers about half the high schools in the US, many of which are actually suburban.

College Board has gotten rid of the race and ethnicity awards! They recently announced.

I think they now offer some recognition for scores in the top 10% of the kid’s school instead of the race and ethnicity awards.

[Anonymous]

And also First Gen award

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a good shorthand for saying "I took a lot of AP classes and tests and did really well on most of them" if you don't want to list all the scores somewhere else on the app.

While it's possible to get a College Board National Recognition Program award with AP tests, most get the award for their PSAT score.

How do you know that? Or are you guessing?

NP, but it’s not hard to look up the eligibility.

https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/help-center/what-are-eligibility-requirements-national-recognition-program

[Anonymous]

Link to the announcement of the revamped program: https://newsroom.collegeboard.org/national-recognition-program-opens-may-7-new-school-recognition-award-open-all-students

[Anonymous]

And to just spell out the info re:APs in the last two links, you can either show that you are in the top 10% of the class OR submit 2 or more APs with a score of 3 or better. That’s after getting a qualifying PSAT score. So even folks choosing to use APs have a low bar to clear - colleges very likely do not take away a message that a student “took a lot of APs and did really well on them” from this designation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And to just spell out the info re:APs in the last two links, you can either show that you are in the top 10% of the class OR submit 2 or more APs with a score of 3 or better. That’s after getting a qualifying PSAT score. So even folks choosing to use APs have a low bar to clear - colleges very likely do not take away a message that a student “took a lot of APs and did really well on them” from this designation.

Yes, the criteria here are set so that although facially neutral the award will be essentially meaningless for students at affluent suburban high schools, where a majority of the class will qualify based on AP scores, but significant at under-resourced schools where it’s rare to even take two APs by 10th grade.