National Honor Society

<p>Many people on CC list the National Honor Society, or NHS, as just another EC on their long list of amazing ECs. Personally, I'm happy to be in it, but it's not something I think will get me into college or something worth bragging about. </p>

<p>However, this is not true at my school. Many students think the NHS is something that will stand out on their applications. Parents think the same thing and so do the moderators. I remember him saying something of this sort to us as he congratulated us... "Although NHS is great to put on your application and looks good it is also about service, leadership blah blah..." As part of the NHS, we have to maintain a GPA above 3.5 and tutor students having trouble with school. You can apply beginning Junior year. </p>

<p>The requirements for acceptance at my school are 3.5 GPA and service in and out of school. Usually everyone with 3.5 GPA or higher is accepted though. I would say about half of my class ~(275) is in the NHS. However, my school is a private prep school, but it's not like half of my class are amazing students. </p>

<p>So i was just wondering how respected NHS is at your school? What are the acceptance requirements and what do you do once you're accepted?</p>

<p>You get invited to apply after freshman year in my school, and you must maintain a 3.0 with some number of service hours per week. A lot of the smartest, highest-ranked students (myself included) did not apply and did not take the organization seriously. It seemed like most of the people in NHS weren't very great students, but the low GPA requirement let them apply.</p>

<p>^very different at my school. all of the "smart" kids are in NHS.</p>

<p>I don't think it's especially prestigious. You only have to maintain a 3.5, which isn't that hard. Once you're in, you have to do a certain number of tutoring hours. However, last year was the year we "revived" NHS so we didn't do anything but attend meetings and get leadership positions.</p>

<p>NHS is overrated. They do require some sort of community service at my school, but it was never really enforced that much. In the end, all you get is a stole to wear at graduation that you never even get to keep. By then, you would have filled and sent all your college apps so it didn't really matter in the end. Most people at school just apply to have something to put on their college apps. That's all it was really good for.</p>

<p>in my school, getting into NHS is okay.. u have to have above a 100 weighted gpa and 50+ hours of Comm service.</p>

<p>Mine doesn't require any service at all, but we do a few charity things as a group. About a quarter of my class is in NHS, so no, it's not really prestigious.</p>

<p>for my school, u have to be in the top 10%</p>

<p>^My school doesn't have a rule like that, because that would mean a maximum of five people per class could be in NHS, and that wouldn't be a very productive NHS.</p>

<p>For Son's school:</p>

<p>Everyone with a 3.75 GPA at the end of 10th grade Q3 is invited to apply.</p>

<p>The application requires the student must document and demonstrate:
- pattern of consistent volunteer service
- examples of school-based leadership
- history of school-based ECs</p>

<p>4 recommendations must accompany the app and at least 3 of them must be from school personnel. The rec form requires the "recommender" to rate the student's leadership, integrity and character as "exemplary," "satisfactory," or "unknown" then provide comments on each characteristic.</p>

<p>I believe in son's class the break down of students was as follows:
- 320 in the whole 10th grade
- 150 qualified for NHS invitation based on GPA (edited for typo)
- 100 actually submitted the application
- 73 offered membership</p>

<p>So, in this school, it is not considered a easy slam-dunk for any kid with minimal stats. Once you make it in, you're proud and work to stay in. You can be kicked out if your GPA falls below 3.75 and/or you don't earn enough "service points" per semester.</p>

<p>ETA: GPA is based on weighted.</p>

<p>Our principal hates NHS and plans on doing away with it. Almost everyone who applies gets inducted junior year, so it isn't this huge honor or anything. Many people don't fulfill the minimum community service requirements.</p>

<p>Oh, and one of my very first posts on CC was about NHS. </p>

<p>I learned that NHS is not -by itself- a shining star on a kid's college app. However, the absence of NHS can raise a red flag at the selective schools.</p>

<p>I think it really depends on the officers at your school. For example, at my school all the officers are doing NHS just to fluff their college app. so they just let everybody in and NHS has become a joke. On the other hand, our Math honor society only has like 20 people because it actually checks your GPA/hours every 2 weeks or so and filters out those who don't meet the requirements.</p>

<p>It's pretty serious at my school, although you could do more or less the same service projects just by joining student council (they do a lot of projects together). It's not easy to get in, but not because of academics- you need a weighted average above a 93 through freshman and sophomore year to be able to apply, but from that point on, it's all about extracurriculars, community service and leadership when deciding who gets in. This year's salutatorian wasn't in it, and neither were some other very intelligent kids.</p>

<p>The application for mine had these grandiose sections for ECs, work experience, volunteer work, leadership positions, and community involvement. So a lot of people thought they'd be rejected because they didn't have something to put in several of the sections. But they only rejected the people that turned in the application late or didn't complete main parts of the application.</p>

<p>For my school, you have to have a certain number of "points" generated from how many ECs, work, volunteer, leadership, and advanced classes you've taken. I think 75 is the bare minimum (different clubs and etc. get different numbers of points). GPA minimum is 4.0 (we grade on a 5.0 scale). Most people at my high school treat it as if it were some huge deal that colleges will love. Our requirements for community service aren't big - 6 hours per semester, but 3 of those need to be at official NHS-sponsored events, which always seem to clash with my busy schedule.</p>

<p>About 50% of my graduating class was in NHS. Personally, I hate NHS and if I could go back and do things over, I would have never applied to be in it in the first place. Would have saved me and my parents a lot of stress.</p>

<p>nice posts guys. </p>

<p>is the consensus that NHS doesn't shine on an application for top schools? possibly 2nd tier schools?</p>

<p>A lot of people can get into NHS. Honestly, I don't think it makes you stand out exactly since it's pretty easy to get into (at least at my school). Plus, we barely did ANYTHING for NHS. I was a little disapointed.</p>

<p>Yeah, people take it pretty seriously at our school, out of a class of 155, we had about 25-30 eligible kids, and about 12 accepted. We do tutoring when a student asks for it, but we mostly just do charity things, and we recycle all of our school's bottles every week.</p>

<p>OMG its a populatiry contest! always! its not fair because us smart nerds can never get in!</p>