<p>Forgive me if this has been posted, I've searched and not been successful finding an answer to my question.</p>
<p>My daughter is in a pretty well-known program in our district and as such is on the mailing lists from a bunch of "WHO'S WHO" type places. She receives mail at least weekly from various "honorary" societies that will send her a lovely certificate of membership and make her "eligible" to apply for scholarships for a fee. </p>
<p>My personal hunch is that these are scams and that pretty much anyone can get published in these things if they pay the fees. But now that she's a junior, I'm wondering if there is ANY value to these things.</p>
<p>The latest was some "National Society for Scholars" or some such BS; they wanted $60 for this prestigious membership.</p>
<p>Do ANY competitive colleges give any credence to these things in admissions? </p>
<p>I think pretty much any honor society that solicits you by mail and asks you to pay a fee for membership is definitely worth being suspicious about. If it’s really a legitimate program, one of her teachers or her counselor will have heard about it, so it’s a good idea to ask before dropping down cash.</p>
<p>I don’t know why folks don’t recognize these come-ons as at best vanity “accomplishments” and at worst scams. I recently read a quarter-page article in my old hometown paper about a young woman who was inducted earlier this year into the National Society of High School Scholars. The adults in her life are doing her no favors by accepting the group’s press release as gospel. The headline described NSHSS as a prestigious honor and the reporter was certainly drinking the Kool-Aid, though he did mention that he was quoting a press release:
The student was quoted as saying,
</p>
<p>Doesn’t that make you worried for this kid? I can understand a high school junior falling for a slick press release. I know it’s hard for parents to entertain the possibility that an honor bestowed upon their child might be bogus. But what about her GC, teachers, the reporter, and any other adult who might like to help her succeed? How are her college applications going to fare if someone in her camp doesn’t figure out that this really isn’t much of an “honor”?</p>
Hm… I can trace my family back to kings… Obviously, I carry great heft in the international community, thanks to my ancestral name.</p>
<p>Siiigh :rolleyes:</p>
<p>This guy is the Great Grand Nephew of Alfred Nobel (though claims to be the grandson), so that totally makes him a qualified academician. I mean, being related to the charitable dynamite guy carries some weight, right?</p>
<p>Too many of them are scams…enough said.
Any REAL Honors Society admission is NEVER done through the mail, only through school.
National Honors Society, Foreign Language Honors Society, Math Honors Society, English Honors Society, Science Honors Society <---- ALL done through school.</p>
<p>Only teachers that know your son/daughter can nominate them for such awards, and therefore it is impossible to receive any such ‘honor’ through the mail. </p>
<p>Furthermore, anything which asks for a fee in exchange for an official certificate or inclusion into some sort of “group” is ALWAYS a SCAM. </p>
<p>Real Honors/Awards will never ask for money, if anything, they will offer money.</p>
Some legitimate honor societies do have membership fees. I’m dual enrolled at a state college, so I was invited into the chapter of Phi Theta Kappa, and it had a one-time membership fee. I imagine that, at universities, the various general and major-specific honor societies may very well have fees.</p>
<p>Yes, I am sure it is a different situation for college. I am mainly referring to high school related Honors Societies.
In college everything costs money -_-</p>
<p>I’m the advisor for the field-specific honor society at my college. The national organization charges us a (not unreasonable) fee for the membership certificate, lapel pin and honor cord that accompany membership, and we pass that fee along to the students. As much as we’d like to subsidize their membership, we just can’t afford it! (We do, however, provide a delightful reception for the parents at the awards ceremony, and it’s a legitimate group.)</p>
<p>My son received an letter indicating he had been nominated for membership in “The National Society of Leadership and Success, Sigma Alpha Pi”. I am a faculty member where my son attends college, and the letter and website appear suspicious to me; for example, the email address for the chapter advisor, though she is listed in the university directory as being a staff member in Student Services on campus, is not a campus (.edu) address. NSLS is listed as a student organization on campus, but a search of the university website turned up not a single response (searches for other student organizations turn up meeting and activity info). The NSLS website itself seems focused primarily on promoting membership by individuals and universities. My intuition is telling me that this is a vanity organization rather than a true honorary society; all the legitimate honorary societies I am familiar with develop their membership via true nominations by individual faculty or community leaders in the field, rather than on grades alone. I am in the process of checking further with the organization itself and the chapter advisor on campus to see exactly what this organization is, but I suspect it is primarily a scam, or at best, a vanity exercise of limited value r/t one’s career, akin to the millions of “who’s who’s” out there that tell me every week that I have been nominated for membership (but never by whom). Buyer beware. I will post further when I have received responses from NSLS and the campus chapter advisor.</p>