Are awards such as the Duke of Edinburgh Award beneficial when applying?
Hello (sorry it's a long post, it ended up much longer than I had intended to)
I have just finished sixth form, and I have been planning applying for Air Traffic Control for about three years now. Last May, career advisers came in from a lot of different backgrounds. One who inspired my quite a bit, was an RAF Officer, and he gave us a full speech on the RAF.
My mate asked him what chance would he have of joining and becoming a Pilot in the RAF, and the Officer replied something like "Well if you don't sit home doing nothing except watching TV everyday, you have a good chance." He then asked if there were any like Sport Athletes in the class, and conveniently there was a guy who did a lot of running for the country and also a rugby team captain. He said they are the ones who have a better chance of doing well in the RAF.
So anyway, as I've said, I'd like to apply for the NATS soon. I've done a lot of reading on the NATS career site, and also ordered a book from Amazon written by Graham Duke. But I'm slightly worried about what things to put down on the application form to groove that I'm an outgoing person.
Things I can think of are:
Welsh Baccalaureate which is an A-Level where you do 30 hours of voluntary work and also travel across the country to listen to important people, and also people come in to the school to make speeches about various things and we have to write a full report on what they say.
Summer School I went to in the Summer of 2008 along with 30 other lucky students. There were 30 people on the course, and we all had to design a build something electronics that mainly used lasers that didn't already exist and could change the world. I was one of the weakest on the course, but I did manage to build a system that cars could use to let the drivers know the right distance they need to be from the car in front. Then I had to present it in front of about a hundred people with a PowerPoint presentation at the end of the 6 weeks. This gave me a Gold Crest Award.
I play indoor five a side every Thursday night.
And I also play badminton every Friday night.
But I don't feel this would be enough, I've been looking into the Duke of Edinburgh Award. There's a Bronze, Silver and Gold Award for it. On the Gold one which I'm planning on doing, you have to do 12 months of voluntary work, train and complete a 4 day, 3 night expedition, and undertake a shared activity in a residential setting away from home for 5 days and 4 nights. So Apparently this is quite good to put down for the RAF. Would be beneficial when applying for NATS?