<p>Ivies don't care if you're in NHS. Virtually all applicants to Ivies would qualify for NHS if their schools had NHS or if NHS wasn't a clique (as it is in some schools).</p>
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If you could pick up a service project your chances would be better.
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<p>Um, if a student has worked four years in a row to support his family, I highly doubt that not being in a "service project" is going to hurt you. For one, that student should be on the RECEIVING end of that service project, not the other way round.</p>
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In my high school everyone who was in the top 15% of the class was automatically admitted after freshman year.
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<p>Did you know, the NHS admission process is not the same for everyone??? </p>
<p>In my school, I didn't get into NHS because:</p>
<p>I wasn't a captain of anything
I wasn't a star in my sport
I couldn't list "Wikipedia sysop/administrator" as an EC because it wasn't part of school
I couldn't list the independent chess leagues and tournaments I had played in because it wasn't part of school
I only joined a sport (swimming) in my last year -- (not primarily out of admissions pressure -- I had always wanted to swim)
In effect, most of my EC's were not involved with the school, even though I had given great effort into them to find EC's that would match my interests. Therefore they could not be listed.</p>
<p>and some subjective factors that I have guessed: </p>
<ul>
<li>I think the chair of the admissions committee for NHS wasn't really into my character/personality </li>
<li>I had publicly criticised the school culture for failing to voluntarily curb the self-segregation between students of different ethnic backgrounds. My poem on this was censored -- it's funny because another poem of mine that I thought inferior was published to the literary magazine </li>
<li>I tended to interact more with the lower-income students and the immigrant students than the demographic that tended to be AP students; the chair knew most of the AP students well but not me (the irony of course, is that I will be the only National AP Scholar in my school this year)</li>
</ul>
<p>And in my fourth year, I highly stressed my chess and debate performance on my application, and inserted it on the side because the school NHS application didn't list the debate club as one of its EC's, nor chess, and yet I had performed well at both of them so I took great care in stressing them. That may have been construed as boasting, and may have backfired on the "character/leadership" side of the application, but whatever. </p>
<p>Thus in my high school's NHS, you can see people are actually considered on an INDIVIDUAL BASIS, not an automatic one.</p>
<p>And you realise, that under my school's system, that if you had an academically well-performing student who spent most of his afterschool time on his JOB, or anything that was not officially set up by the school, or was in an organisation too young, or too small [even if you win state awards in that activity]), that student's EC's would not qualify for NHS.</p>
<p>But of course, if you are rich, and your parents have pushed you all your life to play in some preppy sport and have been rich enough to send you to all these sports camps all your life, if your family has never been in need of welfare, and if you tend to refrain from spending great time in societies and organisations that are not organised by your high school, even if the GPA is on the borderline for GPA eligibility, you will get in. </p>
<p>Consider two of my friends who were volunteer EMTs. They were on call in the wee hours of the morning and it required great effort -- sometimes the next day they would stumble into class half-awake because they had spent all night attending a patient or something. In fact, one got a local award for "Teenagers Who Will Change the World" or something. They got admitted into Bryn Mawr and UChicago, respectively. (However, UChicago gave too little financial aid for a med school student, so my second friend went to ASU instead.) </p>
<p>BUT, they didn't get into NHS. Witness the many NHS people in my school who go to "the University of Southern Maine" or the so-called state flagship, "The University of Maine". </p>
<p>It's funny how the industrial "blue-collar" schools actually have CANDIDACY standards for their honor societies than whatever rich suburban high schools CC people tend to go to, ehhh?</p>
<p>@ scabooter -
LOL first of all the OP holds a JOB. That shows maturity and responsibility. And where the hell would he get the time to do a service project? The JOB obviously takes all of his time up and I am confident that admissions officers will understand and if anything count that job as a hook. lol NHS? u do realize that not every school is the same, NHS admissions differe from school to school, in my school you had to have 4 examples leadership, service, and academia. Many people didn't get admitted because they didn't have 4 examples of "service" The OP would be a prime example. Plus NHS is so cliche that admissions officers would probably not care about it.</p>
<p>Grammar/diction correction to post #22: [damn time limits]</p>
<p>I meant to say "[even if he won state awards for those clubs], that student's ECs would not qualify for my school's NHS."</p>
<p>And at the beginning, I also meant to say, "...if a student has worked four years in a row to support his family, I highly doubt that not being in a "service project" is going to hurt him."</p>
<p>(The cognitive interference between a rhetorical third person pronoun and the rhetorical you is linguistically revealing, since though they are grammatically different they are semantically the same. But yeah I need to proofread my posts more.)</p>
<p>ehh just realized I said the same thing as northstarmom and galosien, sorry guys.</p>
<p>^ It's okay. We understand. :)</p>
<p>Nowhere has he said he's working to help out his family, though. He hasn't really told us much of anything about it [in this thread, at least, maybe you all know more than I do] so I think we should wait for more info.</p>
<p>Just try to make the best out of what you have now.</p>
<p>I got into Ivies and had barely any EC's.
It's possible.</p>
<p>CC should have at the top of every page "ADMISSIONS IS A CRAPSHOOT".</p>
<p>Well...</p>
<p>On the positive side, yes, my job is golf-related. I am a caddy, and it means my job takes a lot more responsibility and professionalism than working at a drive-thru window.</p>
<p>But...</p>
<p>I'm not working to support my family. I'm probably considered upper-class, though I don't like to think of it that way. I can afford to go to any college without a cent of financial aid.</p>
<p>I don't work for the money; I work for the experience of meeting successful businessmen and women (hence the fact they belong to an exclusive country club) and to be around golf, the game I love, and lastly to teach myself discipline...which worked...but that's my college essay.</p>
<p>While not as good as if you were working to support your family (and that of course is a very unusual position for Ivy applicants to be in), your job is the equivalent of an EC that's above the norm for Ivies, and illustrates your independence, maturity and passion for golf. It also should keep adcoms from viewing you as a pampered, spoiled rich kid. :)</p>
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and it means my job takes a lot more responsibility and professionalism than working at a drive-thru window.
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<p>Props to your job, but try not to slam us blue-collar workers, mmmkay? :p I used to think the same thing too, but a lot of things go into food service that you may not know...</p>
<p>Anyway, we foodservice people deal directly with business. Sure our INCOME is not a great return on investment, but you may be interested to know that LABOUR (not raw food supplies) consumes about 65% of a fast food restaurant's outlays ... not electricity, raw food or water. ;) Considering that total labour costs may average around 70-120 dollars an hour for an average-sized branch, and considering that on some peak periods revenue comes over 500/hour (but slows down from anywhere from ten times less to half as less at other times), there's some pretty sweet profit margin going on in there. </p>
<p>Did you know that people who work at drive-thru windows do not just sit at the window? Maybe it's because MY company is totally superior to the Golden Arches ("It's not fast food, it's ...." ;) ;) ;)), but generally any one employee would always be at several positions, all the time. If you are sitting still it means it's a slow day and the shift manager might dismiss you early. There's always careful production management involved, since you to achieve both speed and freshness without wastage. </p>
<p>At times it reminded me of the derivatives of a harmonic function, where there was a production rate lag between stock quantity (or sometimes it was even the opposite of stock quantity, translated the equivalent of +1 on a sinusoidal curve of course, since production rate can't be negative), and at times it reminded me way too much of calculus or spring physics. There were two "production" lags (where a unit of production is effectively a sale and unsold throughput [discarded because it passed the time limit] is effectively non-production), that of cooking (3.5 minutes for certain items) and that of the freshness period (e.g. 7 minutes), and you usually keep several synchronisation cycles, with fries for example the bin was divided into two (it could be made into four), whereas an inferior company like Mickey D's is wont to only have one big bin (they obviously don't value freshness). This is done because it is better to continuously cook small batches that are constantly fresh rather, and keep your wastage small, than create huge batches that will not only turn stale but will also have to be discarded. And on top of regulating all of this, constant scurrying, freezer-fetching, cleaning and filtering have to be constantly done. They give you non-slip shoes for a reason: you have to run. A lot. :) </p>
<p>While you folk are hanging around the i-bankers, we actually expend labour into a value-added product. (I'm jesting jealously of course, but give us our deserved props, man.)</p>
<p>galoisien--thanks for teaching us about the calculus of fast food restaurants. :) </p>
<p>You are management material!</p>
<p>Boy...I have a habit of offending people. Just saying that my job is TOTALLY different than all of my peers, who all generally do the same thing: foodservice, lifeguarding, etc. where they are basically working with their friends from school and might be babied a bit because it's like a halfway house between school and work.</p>
<p>2-iron--And you might interview extremely well because you are used to dealing with adults (except for the ones that break the putter over the knee or throw it in the lake.)
:D</p>
<p>It really comes down to perception -- more so than what you actually did. If you think that you have insignificant ECs, than so will the adcoms. If you correctly communicate your passion for golf and the reasons that you work and what you have learned from both your sport and your job, it will be better perceived than another who lists 5 math awards, 4 clubs he started/is president of and a random service project. Admissions is all about convincing the adcoms that you would be a good addition to the class they are selecting -- take the time to craft your essays well and really express who you are.</p>
<p>lol thats not lack of ECs...
atleast i hope youa re not likje the people in my grade that join like 20 clubs just to impress colelges but they do crap for those clubs</p>
<p>Joining a million clubs won't make up for a poor SAT and GPA.
That much I can tell you, :)</p>
<p>actually, your short list of ECs seems like it would make you stand out from all the perfect applicants with laundry lists of flamazing like curing cancer. (jk).</p>
<p>a consistent job really does indicate maturity and responsibility.
i don't know much so you don't have to take my suggestion, but you should write about what your job taught you.
or maybe you can write about how courage comes in many forms, such as sending a 5 line EC resume to an ivy league. haha.</p>
<p>i kid. actually, i truly believe you have a decent shot.</p>