<p>In our district NHS has a gpa, service and EC requirement to be considered, with an ongoing requirement to stay in. I noticed it was hard for them to find available students to man the concessions booth when they had a turn- too many busy with their EC’s concurrently. The local HS also had a strictly gpa honor with a higher gpa req- good for those who got the grades but didn’t choose to do the extra service hours (24 required to graduate over 4 years) or participate in ECs- good recognition within the school.</p>
<p>Sometimes those awards/memberships serve to help students during their HS career- an ego boost and peer awareness of their abilities- who knew Joe Blow got the grades, etc unless there is some recognition. Good to acknowledge more than athletic prowness.</p>
<p>I think recognition for academic achievement is a good thing, but I think honor societies (like NHS) offer nothing unique and are generally a resume-padding waste of time for high school students. The students who are inducted already have grades/leadership/community service. They are better off spending any extra time focussing on things they love, rather than attending meetings and events just for the sake of being able to claim membership and wear a tassel.</p>
<p>In my high school, NHS has either a 3.7 or 3.75 cut off, but it isn’t really considered a big deal and not many people like being part of it. Language honor societies require a lot more commitment with the monthly activities and many students are involved in them from sophomore year (though not officially inducted). We do have a Quill and Scroll Honor Society but it exists to honor the achievements of publication editors and most people don’t take part.</p>
<p>There are schools were the valedictorian has about a 3.4.</p>
<p>One of my mentees attended an inner city school in Detroit where having a 3.0 qualified one for NHS. Of the about 800 students in the junior and senior class, only about 21 qualified for NHS. Most of those didn’t bother joining because being in NHS attracted bullying and teasing. </p>
<p>My mentee had a lot of guts and chose to be NHS president. </p>
<p>The atmosphere of school like some inner city schools is very different from what occurs at the kind of schools where most of our kids have attended – schools where students vie to be in NHS.</p>
<p>At my highschool NHS was basically Key Club with some minimum GPA (I think it was either 3.6 or 3.7). It was huge at our school, but still a joke. Personally I don’t see anything honorable about doing the types of community service a lot of the kids did, “teaching aid” when they didn’t have a class (more or less time to either do homework or zone out), volunteering at a hospital or church (Which are businesses! That’s not volunteering, that’s just working, but for no wage! I bet they wouldn’t accept people volunteering at Taco Bell.), peer tutoring (was told that most of the kids getting “tutored” just don’t give a damn, and are being forced to be part of this peer tutoring program), other nonsense like that. Most of the stuff people do for this has 0 production value.</p>
<p>Our public HS has NHS with 3.6 GPA, leadership,and service requirements prior to selection and continuing during the jr and sr years. About 40% get into it, so not very selective. In fact it is a bit of a joke amongst the best students, but then there are lots of parents of kids doing non-honors and athletes who want them to be in it to pad the college app. So if one of the best academic students does not join, it looks as if there is something amiss like a dsciplinary issue.</p>
<p>I am the faculty advisor for an academic honor society at a state college (definitely not a CC type school!) - and had to fight for years with my [former] boss to get it established “because it would be elitist if we recognized only students with a high GPA.” (There’s a modest requirement from the national organization.)</p>
<p>We invite students who meet the various requirements to join, but only about 60% of them decide to. That might be because we ask for them to cover the enrollment fee or because they don’t see the advantage of it on a resume, I’m not sure why. But, at least for our students, they take it quite seriously as an honor that they’ve earned.</p>
<p>Our hs, which sends perhaps 25-35 percent of each graduating class to USNews top tier schools, and 5-10 kids annually to top 10 schools, has 3 honor societies, and each seems somewhat credible. NHS here requires at least a B-plus average, and there’s an application packet requiring an essay, recommendations from 2 teachers, a listing of ECs and hours with contact numbers so the info can be verified, etc. It’s fairly good practice for the college app process. </p>
<p>Of course, because some of the NHS criteria are subjective - particularly leadership and character - each year there are kids who get in who shouldn’t and kids left out who shouldn’t be, because the committee is score-settling or making examples out of nonconformist kids or whatever else it is they’re up to. Believe me, you couldn’t pay me enough to be a GC at our school when the NHS membership is announced every spring - it falls to each GC to inform the parents about whether their kids are in or out. Not a happy time in the old Counseling Center. </p>
<p>And each year some kids who qualify don’t bother to submit applications, and it’s generally acknowledged that this has no impact whatsoever on their college prospects. When my oldest d was a senior, the class val hadn’t applied and had great options in April nevertheless. She caused some audience mumbling when she got up to make her graduation speech and wasn’t wearing the gold braid. ;)</p>
<p>The other two honor societies at our school are the science and music honor societies. Each requires a certain GPA in that subject matter and continued service/activities in the group.</p>
<p>When I first clicked on the thread, I thought it was going to be about the definition of “honors” classes, which is another thorny topic. :)</p>
<p>I thought the purpose of an honor society was to confer an honor. Now these societies have morphed into cumbersome organizations where the honoree must “pay” to be honored. The student now has to do x number of hours of community service which is sometimes restricted to specific arenas of activity (such as tutoring less advanced students in the subject related to the society, or fundraising to support starving children in a ___________-speaking country.) I don’t like them at all. S chose not to renew his NHS membership for senior year (ack–had no sash for graduation ) because he didn’t want to dedicate his precious time available for service to the stupid NHS-accepted projects, which were bake sales and similar nonsense. D is president of a foreign language society, but is finding it tireseome for the same reason. She does not think she should have to sell cookies or jewelry to be a member.</p>
<p>Wow. I thought ours was the only school that did this. This is exactly what happens at their school. Dean of Students does not like academically-inclined students. (Go figure. And don’t even ask why she’s the dean of, um, students; don’t even go there.) She also doesn’t like nonconformists (while well-behaved, not trouble-makers). And – mostly derived therefrom – she does not like artists of any kind.</p>
<p>She likes only those who do not present a threat to her by virtue of their abilities. That leaves airheads, “leaders” (true or not), and athletes (the three not to be considered synonymous or interchangeable). Yes, those are the score-settlers who are admitted to NHS.</p>
<p>On the one hand, I am “glad” in a perverse way that our experience was not unique. But OTOH I think it’s a shame. If NHS does not insist on a standard, then membership is meaningless. I was secty-treasurer of my chapter when in h.s. I honestly don’t remember everything we did, but there was no burdensome service requirement or make-work activity. Mostly we were called upon to be role models for the others in our school. (Yes, an honor is a designation but also a responsibility, i.m.o.) You had to have a high-B average, be of exemplary character, and had to care enough about people other than yourself. It had nothing to do with who was “in” politically with the Dean. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>I actually wish they’d drop “character” as a criterion, or at least make some attempt to set objective standards for what that means. When d2 was a junior, a good friend of hers wasn’t admitted, despite the fact that she’s a great kid with a caring, generous nature and hours of significant volunteer service. She was pretty obviously kept out because she publicly challenged a teacher, widely acknowledged to be incompetent, about repeated instances of losing assignments and being unprepared to lecture. And it couldn’t have helped that her mom had an adversarial relationship with the administration. BUT! Another classmate was admitted and eventually elected an officer, despite cheating that was obvious to his classmates. He confronted my kid about her refusal to let him see her quizzes, and was forgiven by the teacher when my d told her about it. And, most disturbing of all, he was one of those awful kids who ridiculed the special needs students by “imitating” them in the hallways. How did he get through the admit process?</p>
<p>All I can say is that I agree with frazzled1 and anyone in this thread that shares his/her views.</p>
<p>My NHS (which I was denied out of for the same reasons as frazzled’s d) is filled with grade-grubbers/ass-kissers who repeatedly cheat in class (and they are GOOD at it). Which I can some what understand since the teachers are the kind that don’t teach and give hard questions on their quizzes from their test-generators. So when I mentioned to the teacher that he/she can change their teaching style and etc. they thought it was questioning authority. Later when I applied to NHS and got denied, I asked the head why I got denied. He mentioned that teachers thought I had problems with authority. lmao. right.</p>
<p>Let me note that I met all grade/course criterions. I had the highest grade in every class during the year and I actively participated during classroom “discussions.”</p>
<p>Truth is that being an NHS member or local officer isn’t going to boost one into admission at the very few colleges that factor ECs, honors into admission. Virtually everyone who applies to those colleges --places like Harvard-- would qualify for NHS.</p>
<p>Those colleges also don’t care about whether students won honors at their schools. Things like “best math student” don’t matter to those colleges. That’s because the top applicants to such colleges have won statewide and national honors and also hold national offices in organizations like NHS.</p>
<p>Haha, our NHS standards were a bit lower this year. You had to have a 3.0 to be in there, volunteer hours, leadership, and character(I think). Not to mention teacher evaluations(haha but teachers are nice, so they’ll probably fill out the best things)</p>
<p>Last year you needed like a 3.5(which I had lol), so overall we have like 50 people. More like a club than a secret society lol.</p>
<p>We do service projects every month and maybe have a sale along with it. We did a Relay for Life last year, and now we have tutoring. However, nobody shows up to get tutored, so we often use the opportunity to just chill lol</p>
<p>Some people who are smart don’t sign up for it, but the majority of people on there do rather good in school and all and aren’t ass-kissers</p>
<p>I think at our school they talk up it’s importance, saying that it helps a lot to get into college. But then again, most people in our class apply to ECU, NC State, UNC and the other UNC’s. Our val and sal are applying to Duke and some ivies(Surprised if they don’t get in)</p>
Actually, it was a friend of d2’s who was denied NHS admission for highly subjective reasons, not d2. Or any of my ds, actually - they’d all rather vent at home than confront a teacher in public, and so were admitted without undue drama. My point was that I’ve seen deserving kids not be admitted to NHS while undeserving kids get in each time one of my kids went through the process. </p>
<p>As to what NHS does - ours actually does provide volunteer services to school and community groups, raises money for worthy causes, etc. It’s really more the selection process that raises questions about the organization’s credibility in our school.</p>
<p>And it can’t be said too often that it doesn’t much matter whether an applicant has NHS on his/her resume or not, especially now that so many honor societies exist. I do think a student (or the parent of a student) who isn’t admitted to NHS might want to investigate the reason why, however. Does it mean that the student might have difficulty getting positive recommendations from teachers for college apps? Is there a justifiable concern about the student’s character - i.e., is the student a bully, openly disrespectful for no reason, suspected of cheating, etc.? (Though cheating is no bar to admission at our hs, even when a teacher is aware of it, as my d2’s acquaintance showed.) Justifiable or not, it’s an opportunity for the student to recognize and address how he or she is perceived by the faculty or administration before college apps get underway.</p>
<p>Interestingly, several of the students I know who were rejected as juniors were admitted as seniors, including d2’s deserving friend who confronted her teacher. Apparently the committee noted character development between May and October. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:</p>
<p>To avoid some of the favoritism described here, some schools make the review for NHS anonymous. Students’ transcripts are reviewed by an independent panel without names attached. Selection is based on grades, ECs, and leadership. Perhaps those who have experienced favoritism could suggest this method at your schools - why would the school administration object to a more equitable procedure? I would think that they don’t want to be accused of bias either.</p>
<p>Additionally, some private schools no longer do NHS and they have their own merit or “cum laude” societies, which are usually restricted to the top 10% academic, plus ECs and leadership.</p>
<p>Our HS started foreign language societies last year; NHS is the only other honor society, with a 3.75 GPA for consideration (which is probably a third of the class). There is an essay, and teacher recommendations are required. I left it up to S if he wanted to join NHS. He did, and the required community service to remain a member is a good thing for him because it is the only service he does. He is not looking at highly selective schools, (but he is looking for admission to a competitive program at a not-as-selective school) and I am hoping the effort to join and stay a member will give him a little help when applying. He is probably the type of kid NHS would help the most - not a super-involved, leader in many things.</p>
) because he didn’t want to dedicate his precious time available for service to the stupid NHS-accepted projects, which were bake sales and similar nonsense. D is president of a foreign language society, but is finding it tireseome for the same reason. She does not think she should have to sell cookies or jewelry to be a member.</p>
My point was that I’ve seen deserving kids not be admitted to NHS while undeserving kids get in each time one of my kids went through the process. </p>