How important is NHS on a college application? Does is matter a lot?
Not very.
No. It ranks up there with your Good Citizenship medal.
That said, NHS often provides good volunteer opportunities that might enhance an application.
To be inducted into NHS, in general you need the four pillars: Scholarship, Service, Leadership and Character.
Guess what colleges are looking for? Scholarship, Service, Leadership and Character.
So NHS is a way of the school honoring the students who excel in those four pillars. That is a very good thing! We honor football players and band members and such…let’s also honor academics!
Also, parents love to see their children publicly honored.
So if the question is:
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I don’t want to bother to apply - don’t worry, colleges care about what would get you into NHS, not necessarily the title. But your parents sure would be proud.
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/It is not available to me - don’t worry, colleges care about what would get you into NHS, not necessarily the title. You can’t get into an organization that doesn’t exist at your HS.
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I did not get in. don’t worry, colleges care about what would get you into NHS, not necessarily the title.
So try to do service and leadership.
NHS per se is not important for college application. Many schools including ours have opted out of the program, not volunteering nor community services though.
Being part of NHS itself is not the achievement that colleges are looking for, since admission requirements vary across schools, but what you do within NHS.
For example, my school has extensive opportunities for NHS members that were not available to me prior to be inducted, and taking full advantage of your opportunities is what colleges are looking for.
nope, dont even bother if you dont like it. Its just a club that appears on a majority of applications that over glorifies volunteer work. do something that you actually enjoy doing
Nope. Worthless. In most schools students with a certain GPA are eligible-so it can signal the fact that the student probably has a decent GPA but colleges can see that easily themselves-by looking at the transcript. NHS tasks differ across schools and are usually benign but meaningless. Same for those “awards” given out by the test company for taking a bunch of AP tests and doing ok on them. The award is meaningless.
As a parent, it’s cool to see your child wearing the special tassel or cords at graduation. For top colleges, it’s a baseline, not an above-and-beyond achievement. It probably looks good at less selective colleges, though. Our NHS requires students to peer tutor for some number of hours, so a lot of eligible kids take a pass if that’s not their thing or they don’t have the time.