Please rate my NHS application essay!!

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

This essay has a 250 word limit
Question: Why should you be a member of NHS? Be sure to focus on how you exemplify scholarship, leadership, character, and service.

I would be a valuable member of the National Honor Society because I strive to lead in all that I do and I am always asking how I can better myself, my peers, and my community. I believe that it is important to search for ways to develop character and achieve academic excellence not only in the classroom but to take the skills I learn at school and carry them out into the world with me. For example, I am currently working with a classmate and a teacher to found a club at school that extends my current English project which started the food pantry here at Grimsley. This club will serve to keep the pantry full and operating for use to anyone who needs it year round. This project highlights my ability to lead and work with others as well as demonstrating my desire to help my peers.
I am constantly striving to be a better student, and I have many study skills and habits that I can share with others. I possess many traits such as open mindedness and patience which enable me to get along well with others and my enthusiasm for academic excellence leads me to help my fellow students reach their full potential in school. I believe that with these character traits I would be a valuable addition to NHS and I promise to bring my leadership and new ideas to NHS to help it become all that it can be.

2

Just so you know, the essay has virtually no weight when your application will be looked over for admission. It really only counts on if you’ve made the GPA cut off.

3

NHS essays are often just a formality, but this would be better if you took out some of the filler (basically everything other than the second part of the first paragraph) and provided more specific examples.

4

Try not to make it sound like you’re answering a question. It’s an essay, not a memorized response. The first sentence is very clunky that way.

5

^to add to that, it seems like you can completely remove the opening sentence, and it will still look like a coherent response, perhaps slightly better than what it is now. There is a lot of “filler” content, and as @halcyonheather suggested, it is better to shorten the amount of filler and use more specific examples of how you implemented those qualities.

6

ANY time you can give an example, as opposed to a series of adjectives, it will carry more weight.