<p>For those of you who said NHS is a joke, you probably are either not in the organization or your NHS chapter is doing nothing.
The NHS has many local chapters, each chapter is different, and if your chapter is not active that doesn’t mean others aren’t. Please don’t soil the name of NHS. If you are in the organzation, you are supposed to do something and if you are not, then you probably don’t know what you are talking about.</p>
<p>^Right, in general NHS is known to be a joke club that ironically sells in the marketplace as a prestigious program to people unaware about it (usually anyone that’s NOT a student), but not being active in it would pretty much make that club almost useless anyway. While little activity + membership is better than nothing, it’s only minimally better than nothing.</p>
<p>^^Are you a active memeber of it? If yes, what are you doing with it?</p>
<p>NHS is of no importance whatsoever in terms of college admissions. None. Zero. Zilch.</p>
<p>^^Are you an admissin officer?
People on this thread already reported NHS presidents got into Harvard, Stanford and Dartmouth. I am not saying they got in because they were the NHS presidents, but you cannot prove that it didn’t help them get in either.</p>
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Being NHS president will not garner more attention than being president of any other school club to an admissions officer.</p>
<p>^^ I never said it better than other presidents. So we are in agreement. In our school, it actually seconds only to the SB president.</p>
<p>If you can glean anything, you 'll see that NHS varies greatly from school to school. Therefore, savvy admissions officers will be able to give proper weight to those that actually amount to something but certainly won’t penalize applicants who aren’t NHS members. I never bothered joining and was admitted by all schools applied, eventually attending an HYP college.</p>
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We are not in agreement, seeing as you think the president of NHS would garner attention from Ivy League schools. It’s just another leadership position on your application, nothing that would be particularly interesting to an adcom.</p>
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That’s a fair assessment. All kinds of people got into top colleges, some got into Harvard because they cured cancers and others who didn’t cure cancers got in too. We cannot conclude that the latter got penalized for not curing cancers because they got in too.</p>
<p>Ok, but again, if your chapter is active, do colleges still dismiss it as useless, because they think that NHS is a joke?</p>
<p>^^ Don’t worry about it. Continue the activities you are doing in the NHS, help people in the community, write a great essay about it and you’ll be in good shape.</p>
<p>No, honestly I am not an active member in it. While I don’t believe being in NHS is useless, I certainly believe that someone with a membership in NHS but offers minimal contribution does not really make him stand out over another student without membership.</p>
<p>In our school, besides having a minimum GPA to get invited, it is a service org & the students have to continue to do min # hours service per semester to stay in. Being an officer and organizing these things, or otherwise putting in major time to its services, would help as much as any other similar EC I assume. </p>
<p>AOs are familiar with the characteristics of the schools in the areas to which they are assigned.</p>
<p>I’d be amazed if any adcoms ever wondered why a person wasn’t in NHS. They might wonder why you weren’t in any extracurricular activities, though. What matters is not so much what you’re in, but what you do with it.</p>
<p>NHS varies hugely from school to school. It doesn’t seem to exist at private schools, but I think does at Catholic ones. It’s a plus of some sort if you are in and do something, but just listing it has modest value at best.</p>
<p>JRZMom, it’s a national organization, I would automatically assume that every chapter across the nation would require its members to complete the same exact amount of hours each semester to maintain membership. Please tell me if I am wrong, I would like to know. I thought the requirement was standard across all chapters.</p>
<p>NHS is nice, but no its NOT important. Just do it if anyway though.</p>
<p>It probably won’t make the difference between acceptance and rejection. I’d only recommend doing it if you would have the community service hours regardless of whether or not you’re in NHS. In that case NHS would help tie your application together. Otherwise, it’s the most overrated EC I know of.</p>
<p>So the concensus is that NHS in and of itself is not that impressive (and a lack of it is not detrimental), but the things that it facilitates: leadership, service, etc. can be impressive?</p>