Advancement

Everything in Advancement

• Animation Merit Badge

  Five requirements. The big one is requirement 3: two animation techniques, chosen with your counselor's approval, each planned with thumbnail sketches or layout drawings, created and shared with your counselor. Around it: what animation is and its history (1), five of the 12 principles (2), a studio tour and animation's future (4), and careers (5).

  Elective Merit Badges Arts Merit Badges Requirements

• Art Merit Badge

  Seven requirements. Three are discussions of what art is, its elements and the principles of design. The making is requirement 4, one subject in four media, and requirement 5, one of three projects. Requirement 6 is a visit that needs permission and approval first.

  Elective Merit Badges Arts Merit Badges Requirements

• Athletics Merit Badge

  Four of nine options in requirement 5: the widest choice on this site, 126 combinations. And two separate three-month clocks that the badge never says are the same three months, which is the difference between a three-month badge and a six-month one.

  Elective Merit Badges Health Merit Badges Requirements

• Archery Merit Badge

  Requirement 5 hides a choice inside a choice inside a choice, and a one-sentence note that sends anyone shooting a camp Genesis bow to Option A rather than the compound option its heading suggests.

  Elective Merit Badges Merit Badges Requirements Shooting Sports

• Artificial Intelligence Merit Badge

  Eight requirements that look like desk work, three of which are appointments: two counselor-led games and an approval that has to come before the project starts. The badge has no pamphlet, so both games come from the counselor rather than from anything a Scout can look up, and requirements 2 and 3 ask the same five questions about artificial intelligence and about automation, which is a trap for anyone who has not separated the two ideas.

  Elective Merit Badges Merit Badges Requirements Technology

• Astronomy Merit Badge

  Nine requirements, and nine separate parts of them need a clear night that the badge never mentions. Requirement 6(b) wants four Moon sketches at the same hour within a single one-week period; requirement 8(b) wants ten objects beyond those observed in requirement 4, which makes requirement 4 its prerequisite; and requirement 8 as a whole is agreed with your counselor rather than simply chosen.

  Elective Merit Badges Merit Badges Outdoors Requirements Safety

• Backpacking Merit Badge

  Eleven requirements, of which two are the badge: requirement 10 is three treks of three days and fifteen miles each, and requirement 11 is a five-day thirty-mile trek with a service project on it. That is fourteen days in the field and seventy-five miles carried, arriving tenth on a list that opens with a discussion of blisters.

  Elective Merit Badges Merit Badges Outdoors Requirements

• Architecture Merit Badge

  Five requirements. Requirement 1 is a tour of your community with a sketch, and research into a historical achievement. Requirement 2 is one discussion of sustainable architecture. Requirement 3 is ONE of three: meet an architect to see a model and drawings, meet one at a construction site, or interview a possible client. Requirement 4 is a scaled floor plan of a room you measure, and 5 is careers.

  Elective Merit Badges Arts Merit Badges Requirements STEM

• Automotive Maintenance Merit Badge

  Twelve requirements, and you need access to a car or truck and its owner's manual. Safety and registration; general maintenance checks; the dashboard; tires; engine; cooling; fuel; ignition and electrical systems; drive train; brakes; TWO of four projects (vehicle costs, cleaning and waxing, changing a tire, or an oil change); and automotive careers.

  Elective Merit Badges Merit Badges Requirements Safety STEM

• Aviation Merit Badge

  Five requirements. Requirement 1 is eight explanations of aircraft and flight, one with a model aircraft. Requirement 2 is ONE thing to build and fly, requirement 3 is TWO flight operations from five, and requirement 4 is ONE visit from four. Requirement 5 is pilot certificates, the instrument rating, Aviation Exploring or Civil Air Patrol, and a career.

  Elective Merit Badges Merit Badges Requirements STEM

• American Indian Culture Merit Badge

  Five requirements. Identify the cultural areas (1), research one tribe, group or nation across fifteen subjects (2), learn ten terms in a language, ten place names and five leaders (3), describe the settlers' encounter and eight things adopted from American Indians, and learn a game and teach and lead it with a Scout group (4). Then ONE of a museum visit, in person or virtual, or a contemporary American Indian gathering (5).

  Elective Merit Badges Culture Merit Badges Requirements Teaching

• Animal Science Merit Badge

  Six options in requirement 6, and three of them hide an inner choice whose first branch is months of raising livestock: a lamb, a feeder pig, five chickens, or an egg flock for five months. Every one has an afternoon-long alternative. Also carries a cross-reference to "the four breeds of horses" that requirement 1 does not produce.

  Elective Merit Badges Conservation Merit Badges Requirements

• American Cultures Merit Badge

  Five requirements, and the sentence that governs the first three is not one of them: an unnumbered note above requirement 1 tells you to choose three groups, one of them your own, and use them for requirements 1, 2 and 3. That choice also decides whether requirement 1 is possible, because four of its five options need access to a community and only one does not. Requirement 4 then asks about a different three, on a different list of categories.

  Elective Merit Badges Citizenship Merit Badges Requirements Teaching

• American Labor Merit Badge

  Nine requirements, and the first one is not the warm-up it looks like: requirement 2(b) names it by number and asks you to take that list of eight worker concerns to a union and ask which matter most. Requirement 7 then draws on the same work without naming it. Requirement 2 also carries its own fallback, contacting an organization online, so no union office needs to be within reach, and requirement 3 is twelve definitions printed as a single conversation.

  Elective Merit Badges Citizenship Merit Badges Requirements

• American Business Merit Badge

  Six requirements. The first three are explanations: free enterprise, history, labor and the economy (1), financial statements, capital and insurance (2), profit, green marketing, ethics and online business (3). Requirement 4 is the Department of Labor and two labor laws. Requirement 5 researches a real business across the five primary areas, and 6 is a career or an interview with a business leader.

  Elective Merit Badges Business Merit Badges Requirements

• American Heritage Merit Badge

  Six requirements. Requirement 1 is the Declaration of Independence, one section rewritten in your own words. Requirement 3 is a topic in the news, the national symbols and your family's history. Three are choices: two of four in 2 (people, an organization or interviews), two of five in 4 (local history), one of three in 5 (films, a biography or songs). Several routes need your counselor's approval first.

  Elective Merit Badges Citizenship Merit Badges Requirements

• Eagle Palms

  One Palm for every five merit badges beyond the twenty-one required for Eagle. The first ones are not earned, they are counted, and only the Palms after those have requirements. Three of them, no waiting period, and a deadline that is the 18th birthday rather than the board of review.

  Eagle Palms Deadlines Eagle Scout Merit Badges Process Rank

• Venturing Boards of Review

  The board of review for Discovery, Pathfinder and Summit: who sits on it, who chairs it, what is discussed, and what happens after, including the parts that are nothing like Scouts BSA.

  Venturing Ranks Appeals Boards of Review Process Rank Venturing

• Advancement in Venturing

  Four ranks built on the ALPS model, one of which has no board of review. Then the three questions a crew actually asks: what a Venturer may count twice, how a Venturer who earned First Class carries on with Scouts BSA advancement, and whether a crew consultant may counsel a merit badge.

  Venturing Ranks Merit Badges Process Rank Registration Venturing

• The Summit Service Project and Rank Application

  Four focus areas rather than five tests, an approval that stops at the crew Advisor and one crew member, and a council that reviews the application but never the project. Then the time extension, and the route the Summit Rank Application takes from the crew to the National Service Center.

  Venturing Ranks Council Deadlines Rank Service Project Venturing

• Technology-Based Tools in Advancement

  Videoconference boards of review, online merit badge classes, web-based counseling, virtual attendance and generative AI: what the Guide to Advancement permits, what it requires, and the three words it defines so that a tool cannot quietly redefine them.

  Special Considerations Boards of Review Council Merit Badge Counselors Merit Badges Process Technology

• Advancement for Members With Special Needs

  Three levels of allowance, and one line between them: an accommodation changes how a Scout learns and is a unit decision; a modification changes what a Scout learns and only a council may approve it.

  Special Considerations Council Eagle Scout Merit Badges Process Rank Special Needs

• Mechanics of Advancement in Scouts BSA

  The four steps by which a rank is earned (the Scout learns, is tested, is reviewed and is recognized) together with who may sign off a requirement and why a sign-off cannot be taken back.

  Scouts BSA Ranks For Adults Process Rank

• Scout Rank

  The joining rank: seven requirements, no board of review, and a Scoutmaster conference that the next rank explicitly builds on. All of it must be done as a member of a troop.

  Scouts BSA Ranks Rank Registration Requirements

• Tenderfoot Rank

  Eleven requirements, one of which is a thirty-day fitness calendar that Second Class and First Class then continue, and six of which wait on a single campout.

  Scouts BSA Ranks Boards of Review Outdoors Rank Requirements