How to Complete the Common App Honors Section – 2026

Depending on your circumstances, the five allotted entries in the Honors section of the Common Application can look like anything from a frighteningly vast and boundless ocean to a maddeningly constrictive kiddie pool. “Normal” high schoolers, those without any prestigious national awards to their names, sometimes feel inadequacy at the prospect of leaving the section blank, while superstar teens often begin melting down at the prospect of abandoning some of their hard-earned distinctions on the cutting room floor. Our advice for the Common App Honors Section will help both types of students, those with a brag sheet as long as Atlas Shrugged as well as those struggling to conjure up a single entry.

What type of honors can I include in the Common App Honors Section?

More than you think! A non-exhaustive list of honors that you can include:

• National Merit recognition
• AP Scholar awards
• Honor societies
• Academic competition placements (i.e., Science Olympiad, FBLA, DECA, AMC, USACO, etc.)
• Speech & debate placements
• Bilingual recognition (i.e., Seal of Biliteracy)
• Publications
• High school honor roll 
• Subject-based awards (i.e., your school’s Chemistry Department Award) 
• Awards received for music, art, theater, poetry, journalism, or photography (i.e., Scholastic Key recognition, Jimmy Awards, etc.)
• Community service awards (i.e., the President’s Volunteer Service Award)
• Leadership awards

As you can see, distinctions in the fine arts or community service are every bit as valid to include in this section as those earned in a laboratory or standardized testing exam room. The only awards that would be misplaced here are athletic achievements (Best Defender, All-Conference Point Guard, etc.), which are better suited for the Activities section.

Should I list National Honor Society or Cum Laude Society?

Listing membership in these organizations is totally fine, but, rest assured, your National Honor Society affiliation isn’t telling the admissions committee much that they cannot glean from other data points on your application. If you have a high GPA and lots of volunteer hours noted in your Activities section—essentially the criteria for membership—it won’t make much of a difference to prospective colleges whether or not you are among the one million current members of NHS, especially if you have other honors to include.

Side note: for some reason, approximately 97.2% of members believe the name of the organization is the “National Honors Society.” If including on your Common App, cut the extra “s” and write it correctly as “National Honor Society.”

How much detail should I include about an award?

You have 100 characters to list and describe your award, which can feel like either a cruel joke or a MacGyveresque-level exercise in doing a lot with a little. Fortunately, if you captured a prize from a widely-recognized organization like the American Mathematics Competitions, Model UN, or National Spanish Exam, then you don’t have to explain the nature of the organization/competition, only your level of performance (i.e., Bronze, third-place, etc.). However, if the award is regional/specific to your high school, definitely include a brief explanation.

Too often, we see students list an award like this:

Winner, Dr. Martin Van Nostrand Award

You may know that the Van Nostrand Award is given annually to the high school junior in Miami-Dade County with the best knowledge of obscure Seinfeld trivia, but the admissions officer thousands of miles away at Stanford has absolutely no clue.

If the award is a school-based honor, instead say: Winner, Dr. Martin Van Nostrand Award for Seinfeld Trivia

Can I abbreviate in the Common App Honors Section?

When referencing a well-known organization, like the American Mathematics Competitions (AMC), Advanced Placement Scholar (AP Scholar), or Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT), you can absolutely abbreviate when necessary.

However, avoid using abbreviations for lesser-known contests, particularly local ones. A reader may otherwise mistake your shortening of the Montgomery County Vocal and Orchestral Regional Competition to the acronym MCVORC for something the Coneheads would order at a fast food restaurant. If you cannot fit the entire name of an organization, include as many keywords as you can. For example: First Place, County Vocal/Orchestral Comp, Violin Solo.

How to fill out the “Level(s) of recognition” field

There are four choices:

• School
• State/Regional
• National
• International

This sounds amazingly straightforward, but we have seen plenty of students get hung up on this area. In short:

School:

Applicant/recognition pool is only composed of students from your high school. In most cases, you receive these awards directly from your school.

Examples:

• High Honor Roll
• Best Junior English Student
• Drama Department Award

State/Regional:

Applicant/recognition pool is composed of students from your local area or the state as a whole. You typically receive these awards from a local organization, in a regional or state-level competition, or from a state governing body.

Examples:

• Zell Miller Scholarship 
• 3rd Place, DECA Regionals
• Governor’s Scholars Program

National:

Applicant/recognition pool is composed of students across the United States. These awards are generally bestowed by a nationally recognized organization or entity, the federal government, etc.

Examples:

• National Honor Society
• AP Scholar with Distinction
• National Merit Semifinalist
• American Invitational Mathematics Examination

International:

Applicant/recognition pool is composed of students across the globe. These awards are generally bestowed by an internationally recognized organization or entity.

Examples:

• International Science Olympiad
• North American Computational Linguistics Open Competition 
• Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair
• FIRST Robotics Championship

You can always check more than one box. For example, the aforementioned National Honor Society can be both “School” and “National” since you are a member of your school’s chapter of a national organization. Alternatively, if you competed at a regional competition in order to progress to the national stage, feel free to check off “State/Regional” and “National.”

Ordering your honors in the Common App Honors Section

In general, you want to lead off with your most important, relevant, and recent honors. Here are three sample student honors and an explanation of how you might go about ordering them:

A) Polk High School Honor Roll, Grades: (9, 10, 11)

B) National Merit Semifinalist: (Grade: 11)

C) American Mathematics Competitions, Distinguished Honor Roll (Grade: 10)

This is not a straightforward trio where going by the level of recognition or the grade level in which the award was achieved makes the ideal order immediately obvious. Given these three, the correct thought process would be as follows:

“High school honor roll is definitely going third because it was received at a lower level of recognition than the other two. Between the other two national-level awards, National Merit Semifinalist (given to the top 1% of PSAT takers) was earned more recently, so it could go in the number one position. However, it probably won’t shock the application reviewer since they already saw my 1570 SAT score. Placing the AMC award first would make more sense; finishing in the top 1% of all test takers in that exam cannot be learned from any other section of my application.”

Help! I can’t fit all of my awards in the Honors Section!

This is never a reason to panic. Including a few extra honors in the additional information section can be a perfectly legitimate maneuver. However, these extra additions will often receive less attention than those included in the main area of your application, so if you go this route, you’ll still want to use our rules above to determine the best possible top 5.

Remember, you want your top five to best capture who you are as an applicant. Contrary to popular belief, colleges are not looking for Renaissance men and women; they are looking for those with particular strengths that will translate on their campus. For example, if you are going the pre-med route, emphasize any awards in competitions like Chemistry Olympiad, National Science Bowl, and USA Biology Olympiad. If you are an engineering applicant, you’ll want highlight anything along the lines of the Google Science Fair or the First Robotics Competition. Those applying to business school might wish to prioritize DECA or FBLA awards.

If you are planning to use the additional information section for extra awards, stop short of including anything from before ninth grade, or that pales in comparison to something in your top five (i.e., a 33rd-place Mock Trial performance when your team won second place the following year).

Key Takeaways for the Common App Honors Section

To conclude, let’s review basic do’s and don’ts:

Do…

• Include honor roll and other school-based awards.
• Use the available space wisely.
• When possible, communicate the precise criteria for the award.
• Abbreviate only well-known organizations.
• Utilize the Additional Information section only if absolutely necessary.

Don’t…

• Leave the section blank if you have legitimate school-based awards to include (i.e., Honor Roll).
• List lesser-known distinctions without an explanation of the award criteria.
• Use acronyms for groups that no one outside of your zip code knows exist.
• List honors from 7th grade or “space-fillers” that really don’t add anything to your application.

How to Complete the Common App Honors Section – Additional Resources

• How to Quickly Format Your Common App Essay
• Common App Essay Prompts
• 10 Instructive Common App Essay Examples
• College Application Essay Topics to Avoid
• Should I Complete Optional College Essays?
• How to Brainstorm a College Essay
• 25 Inspiring College Essay Topics
• “Why This College?” Essay Examples
• How to Complete the Common App Activities Section