What are these "national awards" that every kid on here has?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are lots of extracurriculars that have national awards? I don’t get what’s not to get.

Exactly. In every field, there are competitions that typically happen regional - state - national/international and there are awards in those. Regeneron is not the only one. Examples that come to mind: Science Olympiad, Math Olympiad/Mathcounts and other math contests, Physics Olympiad, Various "Bowl" competitions, Speech and Debate, Design challenges, hackathons etc etc. If a kid has been involved in something consistently and can demonstrate consistency/mastery/achievement via the competitions at national level, that is great.

[Anonymous]

For DS, just the AP with distinction award, or whatever it is. It’s when you take a certain number of AP exams with scores of 4 or 5. I imagine many kids have the same. DD also has an international music competition win.

[Anonymous]

National Latin Exam

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are lots of extracurriculars that have national awards? I don’t get what’s not to get.

Can you please give some examples? Thanks.

Academic Decathlon has a national competition, for example.

Thanks. I am not familiar with that one -- it's not an EC at our school.

[Anonymous]

Do honor societies count?

What about for scouts, Eagle Scout or Gold Award or Silver Award?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wonder the same. I suspect a good many posters consider Scholastic Keys, PVSAs, and Congressional Awards "national awards." Maybe also Eagle/Girl Scout Gold.

It feels like the number of mentions of "national awards" is disproportionate to the number of actual legit national awards.

Ha ha, yes, this has always befuddled me about DCUM!

[Anonymous]

My kid’s competitive dance team qualified for nationals, came in third place, and won some sort of award they give out for a specific dance thing.

I never describe it as a national award the way people do on DCUM. But I suspect when people talk about “national awards” they mean something like that.

I agree that people here use the phrase very, very loosely.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So all posters on here writing "multiple national awards" are taking about their kids being Regeneron finalists?

Definitely not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wonder the same. I suspect a good many posters consider Scholastic Keys, PVSAs, and Congressional Awards "national awards." Maybe also Eagle/Girl Scout Gold.

It feels like the number of mentions of "national awards" is disproportionate to the number of actual legit national awards.

There are Scholastic Awards in art and writing that are at the National Level and Scholastic Awards on the regional level. Some come with scholarship money. I would definitely call a national scholastic art or writing award a national award for kids pursuing related interests. There's nothing higher in those fields and they matter to those fields.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid’s competitive dance team qualified for nationals, came in third place, and won some sort of award they give out for a specific dance thing.

I never describe it as a national award the way people do on DCUM. But I suspect when people talk about “national awards” they mean something like that.

I agree that people here use the phrase very, very loosely.

My child's non-sports team won their regional championships and won a lower level award at the world championships. My child (currently in 11th grade) objects to saying that she won a national award when it was the team that won, but I think this is the kind of thing that the application is asking for.

[Anonymous]

I think ops point is that they are not as fancy or impressive as they sound (many of them, anyway). I think that’s true. My kid kicked butt on the national Spanish exam. I’d take a long deep breath before describing it as a “national award.” But I think that’s what others on these board do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder the same. I suspect a good many posters consider Scholastic Keys, PVSAs, and Congressional Awards "national awards." Maybe also Eagle/Girl Scout Gold.

It feels like the number of mentions of "national awards" is disproportionate to the number of actual legit national awards.

There are Scholastic Awards in art and writing that are at the National Level and Scholastic Awards on the regional level. Some come with scholarship money. I would definitely call a national scholastic art or writing award a national award for kids pursuing related interests. There's nothing higher in those fields and they matter to those fields.

+ 1

My teenager has a Scholastic Gold Key. That is regional. A few kids at her school won Scholastic National Silver or Gold Medals. Those are national.

I think if you care compared to kids from all over the country and you are selected, it may count as national (assuming only a small percent are selected).

To the earlier poster wondering about honor societies and Eagle/Gold. Honor societies are decided at the school level. That is a school-level award. Doesn't matter if "national" is part of the name. Eagle/Gold is regional, though you could argue those are more of an earned distinction than an award (because you weren't competing with others). The Gold Awards that are selected for the 10 scholarships for the entire council - 10 selected out of 200-ish Gold Award projects - those are regional awards.

[Anonymous]

In the non-STEM space you also have:

-academic competitions (there are many and they can get quite niche; I just learned there is one for linguistics that SBF‘s girlfriend did in high school)
-NSLI-Y and other State Dept. programs
-multiple “national” level competitions (air quotes because it’s also just branding) for Model UN, forensics, debate, etc.
-DECA, FBLA and other business and industry-oriented organizations have national awards/competitions/programming

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder the same. I suspect a good many posters consider Scholastic Keys, PVSAs, and Congressional Awards "national awards." Maybe also Eagle/Girl Scout Gold.

It feels like the number of mentions of "national awards" is disproportionate to the number of actual legit national awards.

There are Scholastic Awards in art and writing that are at the National Level and Scholastic Awards on the regional level. Some come with scholarship money. I would definitely call a national scholastic art or writing award a national award for kids pursuing related interests. There's nothing higher in those fields and they matter to those fields.

+ 1

My teenager has a Scholastic Gold Key. That is regional. A few kids at her school won Scholastic National Silver or Gold Medals. Those are national.

I think if you care compared to kids from all over the country and you are selected, it may count as national (assuming only a small percent are selected).

To the earlier poster wondering about honor societies and Eagle/Gold. Honor societies are decided at the school level. That is a school-level award. Doesn't matter if "national" is part of the name. Eagle/Gold is regional, though you could argue those are more of an earned distinction than an award (because you weren't competing with others). The Gold Awards that are selected for the 10 scholarships for the entire council - 10 selected out of 200-ish Gold Award projects - those are regional awards.

The scholastic art and writing awards have over 300,000 submissions (which are already selected as top works by at teacher at a school) for 7-12th grades.

[Anonymous]

My kid had NMSF and a national coding honorable mention. Also an Eagle but I did not consider that a National Award. There is no national level competition for it.