<p>Sorry if this ends up being a saga about my recent experience with NHS!</p>
<p>So I just got rejected from NHS because apparently my 85 hours volunteering at a daycare do not count as service (working at a summer camp or shelving books at the library is perfectly acceptable to the admissions committee at my school, but teaching kids to read and write and practice math and get along with each other isn't). I really expected to get in because I had about 120 hours total, a great GPA, and nearly 100 leadership hours; however, since apparently 80+ hours of my application aren't acceptable, I was not inducted. I have the chance to appeal; unfortunately, the appeals letter is due in a week (I only got my results yesterday), and I have to have at least 40 more hours in order to meet the 80 hours minimum. As a result, I'm probably not going to get in this year. </p>
<p>Is NHS very important to colleges? I can reapply next year after doing more hours, but by this time, all my applications will have been sent out and it won't mean anything. Is this going to hurt me in the admissions process?</p>
<p>NHS admissions procedures vary greatly from school to school. Some fantastic schools don’t have NHS, some less than awesome schools do. All of the credentials which might qualify one for NHS can be explained in their full glory and significance elsewhere on an application.</p>
<p>So, no, it’s not very important. If you want to know the importance for any particular school, you can look up what parts of the admissions process they consider most important. Quite often at top schools, the essay and the transcript rank highly. Rarely does membership in NHS.</p>
<p>Don’t get me started on NHS. It’s meaningless to colleges unless you are the President or VP of your school’s chapter, or if you do not have enough other worthwhile EC’s.</p>
<p>Schools’ NHS criteria for acceptance vary greatly, and can be very subjective/arbitrary. College admissions offices know that.</p>
<p>If you enjoy the daycare volunteering, why not keep up with that, as well as whatever else interests you. That’s more impressive than a line about NHS membership on your apps.</p>
<p>for more competitive schools, NHS actually hurts your application. This is because you only have 10 slots on the commonapp for extracurriculars, using one on a worthless service organization is negative, even if you held some kind of leadership position. I was inducted to my school’s NHS with honors with 1000+ volunteer hours; I quit a year later and didn’t even mention it on my app. The NHS is a elitist organization that seeks to place prestige on kids with “leadership” and high gpa under the guise of “service group”. They actually do nothing to help their community, its literally just an exclusive club. The whole idea of placing a minimum gpa requirement to get into a service group doesn’t make any logical sense, and is contradictory to the mission of true volunteerism. It literally creates a gap between the “smart leaders of tomorrow” and the “other stupid people who we need to help”. There are so many philosophical loopholes in the concept of a National Honor Society that subvert their whole mission. It really is a worthless club; something that people feel like they need to join in order to write a line on their college apps. You have to ask yourself why the NHS still exists when more organized, effective groups such as Key Club and Red Cross are around. It is literally just an ego stroke, don’t get hung up on the fact that you didn’t get in. You’re better off spending that time elsewhere.</p>
<p>schlaag, that is what the “additional information” section is for. There is no reason you can’t put more than 10 ECs on. My D put on 13 (10 in the slots, 3 others in the additional info section). And got in EA to U of Chicago.</p>
<p>That said, I think NHS is a pretty worthless EC unless you have a leadership position. It is stupid hard to get into at my kids’ school. One applied and did not get in. The other did not bother to fill out the paperwork. Both have done fine in the college admissions process.</p>
<p>yeah i agree, the criteria they use to judge who is accepted and who isn’t seems extremely ambiguous…the defining principle for my school this year seems to be that if volunteer work is done for a profit organization, it is somehow worthless as compared to doing so for a non-profit. i think they fail to realize that “nonprofits” like hospitals, churches, etc., are kinda sorta profit-motivated too</p>
<p>either way, i think its best i spend my junior year on other ECs and on research; hopefully that will be enough to outweigh the other kids at my school who did get in</p>
<p>Being in NHS isn’t important in and of itself. As others have said, you could make it matter. But that wouldn’t offer any real advantage over having made your involvement with the track team matter, or madrigals, or debate, or your paid job.</p>
<p>I think this varies so much by high school. At my kids’ hs, NHS is difficult to get into, with seemingly arbitrary application rules about having the right color folder for your application and the pages of recs in the correct order, but it has to be in order to be meaningful at a school where the students all tend to be high achievers. Otherwise, every student would get in. It was actually a stressful process!<br>
Once they got in, it has also turned out to be extremely time-consuming. Their NHS raised $30K+ for their charity and was the fourth largest hs donor in the country to that charity. In order to chair a committee within NHS, they have to apply, and then interview for a position…and since everyone wants leadership, that’s competitive too. So, in the case of their hs, it is definitely worth a line on the college app because it is a genuine EC commitment. In fact, after reading this thread, and the other, I’m wondering how they can explain to the adcom that this apparently is not a “typical” NHS?</p>
<p>intparent is completely right about attaching extra information in the “additional information” section of the writing. I myself attached a resume. But the ten slots in the common app “activities” section are for your most impressive extracurriculars, and I was simply stating that NHS should not be important enough for anyone to waste a slot on. Unless your school NHS truly did something amazing, it screams “filler”. And most likely, if you did something amazing, there aren’t enough characters in the common app to express it clearly. If NHS is anywhere it should be at the bottom of the extracurricular’s section of the resume.</p>
<p>Interestingly enough, the speaker at my D’s NHS ceremony last year had a great message because she admitted that she was not admitted into NHS during HS. She is a State Supreme Court Judge. She went on to say that the most important qualities you can have as a student, are determination and perseverance and then went on to show how she achieved her current position as a judge which took many turns along the way. NHS is highly over rated. I do not think this will affect your college chances or have any bearing on your success in life.</p>
<p>Back in the prehistoric era, when I was in high school, I was admitted to NHS during my junior year. I had issues with the way they chose members and, as a result, declined. The counselor was upset. That’s when I learned I was at the top of my class, when she asked how it would look if the top student wasn’t in NHS. I said I didn’t care.</p>
<p>I was afraid they’d try again the following year. Fortunately they didn’t, so I didn’t need to refuse again.</p>
<p>Each school runs its own chapter and therefor sets its own rules and requirements. At DS school he refused to consider NHS after his close friend with excellent stats and over 150hrs of legitimate volunteer service was declined. While another female classmate of questionable character, failed Chem & Calc during selection year and had to take summer make up courses was admitted. The difference, her volunteer service was helping teacher (NHS advisor) prepare papers for afterschool club. Unfortunately, NHS at DS school lacks merit and therefor was not a CLUB he desired to be a part of. Fortunately, NHS matters less than GPA, SAT/ACT in terms of college admissions. Its little more than another club in terms of respect garnered. I will venture to say that if the company you will keep as a member of your schools NHS has merit in terms of character then go for it. If the only reason you want to be a part of NHS is for its’ potential benefit to you in admissions decisions, I don’t think it holds much weight. You won’t get into Princeton because you are in NHS because highly selective schools want students of true character not perceived character.</p>
<p>^Correction: it doesn’t hold ANY weight unless the student actually does something unique with it. If a school’s NHS requires a 3.5 UW GPA and 50 hours of community service to actually get into, none of those preliminaries are actually part of the club. Unless a student is a leader within the Society (preferably President or VP) or partakes in a hefty amount of meetings or extracurricular projects (both of which can be independently undertaken outside of school), the club and its requirements carry no weight in terms of admissions. If anything, and if listed without context of lots of involvement/leadership, it looks like a student is simply bogging down his/her resume with random honors to compensate for not having meaningful ones, which wastes the time of the admissions officers and may serve to dilute more significant accomplishments.</p>
<p>However, if me and some other kid from my school have similar gpas, test scores, clubs, etc., but he/she has nhs on their application and i dont, will a college be more likely to choose him/her? in my school, theres like 10 kids including me in the top 2% that all have similar stats (except our ecs may be slightly different), so i dont want nhs to become a reason for someone getting picked over me</p>
<p>They’ll chose the applicant whose grammar, punctuation and spelling are better.</p>
<p>Really, there’s no way to answer your question. It’s a pointless hypothetical, and even if there is “some other kid from my school [with] similar gpas, test scores, clubs, etc.,” the applicants’ essays and teacher recommendations are much more likely to tip the scales one way or the other than NHS.</p>
<p>I was in the same boat last year; after the initial shock I did a little research. I was told I didn’t have strong enough teacher recommendations. Even the #1 Ranked student didn’t get in!! NHS at our school is filled with students who are in the “right” clubs/activities; it is poorly run and everyone in it admits it is a joke. No, I am not the president of the Audio Visual Club, nor do I belong to the debate club but I have great EC’s that show committment to my community and few select organizations outside of school. So far I am 4 for 4 on EA admissions. Not being in NHS has not hurt me one bit.</p>
<p>No. Make believe it doesn’t exist. Be the person that you want to be. Do the things that you want to to. Nobody does NHS because it’s what they want to do it. Nobody in real life does community service for credit. They do it because they want to, they fell good doing it, and they feel an obligation to serve. </p>
<p>I say don’t appeal. Forget about it and move on. Colleges won’t care.</p>