The Gold Standard.

The Golden Key of the American FFA Degree.

As the highest degree achievable in the National FFA Organization, the American FFA Degree shows an FFA member’s dedication to his or her chapter and state FFA association. It demonstrates the effort FFA members apply toward their supervised agricultural experience and the outstanding leadership abilities and community involvement they exhibited through their FFA career.

American FFA Degree recipients show promise for the future and have gone above and beyond to achieve excellence

American FFA Degree Information

To ensure applications can be submitted and reviewed prior to the National FFA completion deadline, all Washington American Degree Applications are due March 1, 2026. State-approved applications will then be submitted to National FFA by March 15, which means all applications are guaranteed to be reviewed and returned to states at least two weeks prior to the June 30 deadline.

All nationally requested corrections/clarifications must be resubmitted to National FFA by June 30.

American FFA Degree Candidates need to make sure the contact information in their degree application will remain current through October 2026. This includes phone numbers, email addresses, and mailing addresses. This information is vital for National FFA to communicate instructions and information regarding participation in the American FFA Degree Ceremony and to deliver American FFA Degree certificates and keys to those unable to attend the convention. Certificates and keys that are returned to National FFA due to insufficient mailing addresses will not be delivered to recipients.

American Degree applications are due March 1, 2026 and will be reviewed by Washington FFA. Any applications not submitted by the March 1 deadline will not be accepted.

accessing the American Degree application

There are two ways to access the American Degree Application. Instructions are as follows:

  • Using AET, students have completed records and can choose Reports, FFA Awards, and select 'add' to load the American Degree.    

    On the student side, the focus is records and those entries are summarized into the appropriate areas of the award.  

    • Each section or page is listed on the left side and all comes from records.

    • Each page has a "review" in AET and that will take the student to the records that are listed on the page

    • This follows the exact process for all the new FFA awards, so will help in other awards.

    The final step in the awards is to print the application, which is a print out that can be reviewed as in the past.  Each page has a "Version number" so if any financial or journal data is updated, print the entire application over. The cover page and manual check sheet have no version number, so those can be replaced with any new printed version.

    As a teacher, you can review and assist students from the teacher side of AET, by:

    • Logging in as the teacher

    • Select Reports, and then FFA awards

    This will show any students with a degree in progress, or as the teacher you can add a degree into any FFA member's account

    The instructions page has an "unlock" the application, and that allows users to just add/edit data on the applications pages.

    Electronic signatures can be submitted through AET.

  • Not using AET, student can go to FFA.org, choose the FFA Application Center >> American Degree, and then the site will require the member to login.  After log-in, the site will redirect to an AET-based application page.