Every year, Mira Costa’s seniors and juniors have the opportunity to be honored at Mira Costa’s end-of-the-year assembly with departmental awards from each academic department. While the rationale behind these awards is strong, Costa could benefit from also rewarding notable freshmen and sophomores, to create incentives for students for all four years.
The All Awards Ceremony was held on May 28, and gave both departmental awards decided on by the Mira Costa staff to seniors or juniors, and “book” awards from various universities and alumni groups to seniors, as well as presenting the Student of the Year award. Costa should change the departmental awards to allow for exeptional students for each grade to be recognized.
Costa should look at other high school’s as reference for how they should conduct their All Awards Ceremony. For example, Marymount holds an award ceremony (similar to Costa’s All Awards Ceremony) where they hand out awards to freshmen, sophomore and juniors, and wait until graduation to recognize their seniors.
According to Marymount junior Meghan McMahon, seniors can use the awards that they have achieved throughout their high school career to give them an edge on their college application. When Costa students are applying to schools, they are at a disadvantage when compared to other students, who have been recognized with awards from their teachers throughout their high school careers.
Costa should have department awards intended for each class specifically, so that younger classmen have a chance to achieve recognition. If they do win an award, Costa’s freshmen and sophomores will have a kickstart at compiling their achievements for their college brag-sheets so that they have the opportunity to look more appealing to a college admissions at all grades of their high school career. Since a majority of the awards are given to seniours at this ceremony, college admissions will never reven get the chance to see the awards that were given.
According to Mira Costa College Counselor Megen Anspach, colleges look at the “whole package” of awards received by students throughout their high school career, and each piece strengthened their overall application. By providing department awards to every grade individually, Costa would give students the chance to show consistent excellence and progression of skills in their applications.
The General Excellence Award at Marymount is an award given to a student from each grade that did well in all the classes that they took. Costa’s student of the year award recognizes the senior that best represents the best all around student at Costa as a whole based on academic records and extra-curricular activities. McMahon believes that this motivates students to try harder throughout the year. Because Costa only gives this award to one senior, it is losing a chance to motivate students of all grades levels to try and achieve excellence every year.
Through expanding the All Awards Ceremony to include recognition of all grade levels, Costa will give students more motivation to try and excel academically throughout the year, as well as give them the chance to show colleges their growth and progress.
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