Are awards required for admission to top universities?

Answered

Hi @sa45d7sag

Thanks for your question. Regardless of your age, background, or HS format, if you are intending to apply to a list of colleges to enroll as a first-time freshman, you would be held to a similar standard as other applicants.

The type of school that you should consider applying to would be based on your overall academic and EC narrative primarily. To gauge how you compare to the list of colleges you have in mind, I highly recommend that you fill out a CollegeVine profile and add all your grades, test scores, demographics, etc. Then create a college list and see how you currently fare. Regardless of the published acceptance rates, the CV chancing engine takes a more holistic view of your profile and spits out a probability score that is more in line with other applicants having the same stats as you. All schools with a 30% chance or less would be considered a reach school, 30%-45% a hard target, 45-75 a target, and above 80% safety.

The 2 most important areas for top colleges are your Academic narrative which includes Grades GPA, Course rigor, rank (if available), and EC narrative and personal character.

Since most colleges are test-optional, they will consider SAT or ACT if you submit them, however they never will weigh in as heavily as your HS rigor, GPA, and evidence of intellectual curiosity/vitality. Awards and honors are like icing on the cake unless they are national or international ones like winning a Nobel prize or being a US Presidential Scholar which is super tough to get.

What you have to realize immediately is that top colleges in the US only use merit benchmarks like SAT/ACT scores as a threshold bar to meet a credit score to get a quick fix on how the rest of your application should proceed. Often, when colleges get 50,000 applications for 1500 seats, they need to quickly cull the pile as soon as possible so they may use GPA, test scores, and other factors to reduce the pile to a manageable size.

Each college has its own self-report prioritization of relative importance factors they use in college admissions. This can be found on something called the Common Data Set which the colleges file each year. If you google search CMU common data set 2021-22, you will find such a document. If you open it up to Section C.7 there is a table of relative importance.

For CMU, very important factors are Rigor of Secondary school record, Class Rank, Academic GPA, ECs, Character/Personal qualities, and Volunteer work.

Under important factors are application essay, recommendations, talent/ability, first generation, racial/ethnic status, and work experience

Under Considered factors are Standardized test scores, Alumni/AE relation, and geographical residence.

And not considered factors are interviews, State residency, Religious affiliation, and level of applicant interest.

In addition CMU has separate instructions if you are a Cyber Student (online)

Carnegie Mellon welcomes applications from students who have been schooled at home or online. In addition to the information below, please be sure to follow the instructions for first-year applicants and review the admission requirements noted at the top of this page.

To apply to the university, you must:

Submit a completed Common Application.

Submit a syllabus or course descriptions of the work you’ve completed prior to applying. This should include a list of all textbooks used for your coursework.

Submit a transcript of grades and/or evaluation of your work that’s consistent with state guidelines.

Submit a recommendation from a counselor, a representative of your state board of education, your home school association or other person of authority.

Follow the instructions for required testing based on the college and program you’re applying to.

Provide proof that you'll have met, by the end of May of the year of graduation, all requirements for an official high school diploma.

If admitted, you will also need to submit an official final transcript, GED or certificate of completion from your local school district or state board of education by the end of July of the year of matriculation.

So my recommendation is to do some research into colleges focused on admissions for non-traditional HS students because you are in 1.) online school and 2.) are an older student.

Good luck and feel free to ask more specific questions about either the college admissions process or a particular college you are interested in.