Honors are a great way of distinguishing yourself from other applicants, especially at top-tier schools, where most applicants have high test scores and excellent GPAs. An honor refers to any award or achievement you received at any point during your four years of high school. So even if you aren’t a National Merit Scholar, chances are you’ve received some kind of recognition worth mentioning.
The Honors section appears in the Education section of the Common App. First, it will ask you how many honors you wish to list. Because you are limited to five, you may need to choose the ones that are most important to you, or those that best represent your academic achievements.
If you need more space to list other honors, include your most impressive and relevant achievements in the Honors space, and use the additional information section to discuss other awards, or consider sending a resume as a supplement to your application.You should aim to fill out all five spaces available, even if you are including fairly common honors, such as Honor Roll.
You are allowed 100 characters to describe each honor. If it is a common award such as National Merit Scholar, you won’t need to elaborate any further on the application, since colleges will be familiar with the distinction. You should designate which type of award you received, though (i.e., Commended Student, Semifinalist, Finalist, or Scholar).
However, if the award is particular to your school, or is something that may not be self-explanatory, you may need to describe it a bit more. For example, if you received an award for your performance in Latin at your high school, you might list it as “Marcus Jones Award — awarded to a junior for excellence in Latin.”
If there is a large pool from which recipients are chosen, mention the number of candidates and indicate the competitiveness. If there is a monetary award tied to the honor, mention the exact figure as well, such as “Smith Library Scholarship for Excellence in Writing — $5,000.” You should also list non-monetary prizes associated with the honor. For example, if you won an award for your artwork that enabled it to be showcased in an exhibit, mention that. Overall, try to be as specific as possible within the space available. Avoid using acronyms unless they are widely known.
Next, you will be asked to designate the grade level in which you received the honor. This is fairly straightforward. If you received a particular award in multiple grades, you can check off as many grades as apply here. If you received an award during the summer, designate the rising grade. For example, if you won a writing competition the summer before your sophom*ore year, you would check 10th grade.
You will also be asked to designate the level of recognition: School, State/Regional, National, or International. This list is in ascending order of importance, meaning that an international award is considered the highest level of honor, because the domain of students eligible for the award is the largest at this level. If you are unsure of which level of recognition you received, consider the pool of candidates who could have received it.
A school award indicates that the students in your high school were eligible; a state or regional award means that people in your state, beyond just your school, could have won; national refers to honors students in your country could have received; and an international award is any honor for which the candidate pool spans more than one country. List your honors in order of descending importance, with the most selective or competitive (such as international awards) at the top, before state/regional and school awards.
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Honors and Awards vs. Activities
You may be wondering which awards you should list in the Honors section and which ones you should list in the Activities section, since you are asked to list awards won under those activities as well. In general, you should list an honor or award in the Activities section if it can be directly tied to a specific activity mentioned.
For instance, if you receive a varsity letter for basketball, you should list it under your basketball entry in the Activities section. Similarly, if you place first in a Mathletes competition in which you participate as part of Mathletes club, you should list that under your Mathletes entry in Activities.
However, if you receive an honor that isn’t tied to a particular extracurricular activity, or is associated with a class, this type of award should be included in the Honors section. That includes scholarships and contests that aren’t awarded within the context of an extracurricular activity. For example, if you win a statewide essay contest for a piece you wrote for your English class or on your own, you should list that award here.
Feel free to break this rule if you have trouble filling the five slots in your Honors section. In that case, you can list an award you received through an extracurricular activity as an honor instead.
Similarly, if you have won numerous awards through a particular extracurricular, you may want to highlight a particular achievement, as well as keep to the character limit in the Activities section, by including it in the Honors section.
For example, if you won a national saxophone competition and have been selected for All-State Band and All-State Jazz Band, as well as performed at Carnegie Hall, you may want to include the honor you deem most significant in the Honors section. Of course, you should never make up an honor — that is an ethical violation and could result in a severe penalty.
