CommonApp Honors or Extracurricular Activites?
Hi. I'm a senior who is applying to a college by November 1st through CommonApp.
I have two international competitions; one writing and the other is speech. I already have an extracurricular list of 9-10 activities.
However, recently, while putting some of my awards under the 'Honors' section, I wasn't sure where my competitions would go.
Here's the thing. Those competitions are organized by this one institution. It's basically called "Korean School" where us Koreans who are living in international countries study Korean. This place organizes small competitions, and if you get first place, you have a chance to participate in the international ones.
A few years ago, I was able to join two international competitions through this institution, and I got first place for the writing one (1st of 635 people in 54 nations) and second place for the speaking one (as representative of my country).
For my extracurricular activities, I wrote "Saturday Korean School" as the title and said something like "attended to enrich my heritage as a Korean; established intimate connections with teachers; received writing, speaking, history awards."
The writing and speaking awards I am referring to above are the international ones. I want to emphasize on the scale of these competitions (which I put under 'Honors') but for 'Honors,' I can only describe it under 100 characters. I want to be able to write more (because these competitions may be the only international competitions that I have attended, and I know these competitions are limited to only people who attend Korean School so admission officers might not recognize them).
Would it be best to leave it like this, or can you see a different option? My dilemma is whether to put those competitions under 'Extracurricular Activities' instead and write more, or just put it under 'Honors,' but still keep 'Saturday Korean School' as my extracurricular activity because I did other things besides speaking and writing contests while attending.
Thank you.
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1 answer
Many say that Honors is more important for the admission officers, so if you think it's one of your best achievements, put it in the Honors section. If you want to write more about it, you can try to write it in the additional writing section, they will be able to read more about it there!
However, if you feel that it's not the top 5 of your achievement, put it on your extracurricular section so you can showcase your other great achievement in the Honors section.
Or, if you want to put it in both sections, make sure that you describe it with two different perspectives so it won't make it repetitive.
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Also, under 'Additional Information,' I wrote two of my international/global competitions for more information (as it is not well-known to Americans). My literary/writing was awarded 1st place this year worldwide like I said, and the organization has published a book of all award-winning works, including mine. Should I write this and if so, do I also include the official website where they can find the book (the books are not for sale, so it is only found on that specific website as an e-book).