Application Questions

[dxa3700]

I am a first time applicant so i just have a few questions. I am going into my sophomore year of college majoring in Chemical engineering my GPA is a 3.6 and I have 3 major internship/research experiences (one of which being through a DoD program). I can get pretty great letters recommendations so i am not really concerned about that. My first question is: do i need to submit an ACT/SAT score? I kind of slacked off on studying for the exam back in high school because i already knew the college i'm currently attending was interested in me (I run NCAA D1 Track). I did not study at all for the exam and scored a pretty lousy 27 on the ACT. I am willing to take it again just to help my chances of getting selected. My Second Question: Does honors and Awards matter? I have done a lot of great things but a lot of the things i do just do not give out awards.

[MyAdvice]

I am a first time applicant so i just have a few questions. I am going into my sophomore year of college majoring in Chemical engineering my GPA is a 3.6 and I have 3 major internship/research experiences (one of which being through a DoD program). I can get pretty great letters recommendations so i am not really concerned about that. My first question is: do i need to submit an ACT/SAT score? I kind of slacked off on studying for the exam back in high school because i already knew the college i'm currently attending was interested in me (I run NCAA D1 Track). I did not study at all for the exam and scored a pretty lousy 27 on the ACT. I am willing to take it again just to help my chances of getting selected. My Second Question: Does honors and Awards matter? I have done a lot of great things but a lot of the things i do just do not give out awards.

I didn't submit ACT or SAT scores for my bachelor's award nor my follow-on award for my Master's so you should be able to omit them and be fine.

For the honors and awards section, it doesn't necessarily have to be a physical award. If you can stretch a way you were "honored" for any of the great things you have done you should be able to include it. If a professor or supervisor verbally commended you for something you could include that. If it was a private comment I would say you were "commended for..." but if they mentioned it in class or a staff meeting you could stretch it and say you were "recognized for..." I am not sports person at all, but even I would say including any D1 track honors or awards would be a great way to showcase your discipline and ability to be a team player, so definitely fill out that section with a few of those. You don't want to lie in the application, but you do want to sell yourself, so if you find one aspect of the application lacking you are hurting yourself if you don't try to spin some of your experiences to fill it out.

Final note, a few months ago the application scoring guidelines were leaked and documented on a post on this forum. They included the weighting for each section. If you dig around and find that, it would give you an idea of how important these sections are or are not.

[SMARTguy]

...a few months ago the application scoring guidelines were leaked and documented on a post on this forum. They included the weighting for each section. If you dig around and find that...

Or it could have just been linked to it in the first place...

http://thesmartforum.org/viewtopic.php? ... 84a#p11095

also found this one

http://thesmartforum.org/viewtopic.php? ... c84a#p9449