<p>Actually, as I think of it, the PBK does have some signalling value over and above the striaght GPA. PBK goes to the top 10 - 15% of students. If someone gives me a resume that says GPA of 3.8 at a college I’m not familiar with, I’ll know that they are probably a good student, but it doesn’t tell me if they are in the top 10%, top 30% or just the top 50%. The PBK does tell me something specific that the GPA does not.</p>
<p>^^ That works unless the person reading the resume thinking PBK is a fraternity!</p>
<p>Law schools won’t care about PBK, but they will care about GPA. I’m pretty sure LSAC would count your Harvard grades in your GPA for law school admission purposes (my son did a study abroad semester at a program run by another US university, and the grades were included in his LSAC GPA).</p>
<p>PBK is a nice honor to list on your resume. But it seems that this is more a decision as to whether or not the semester at Harvard (or any other school) would be a valuable academic experience. Given that, it seems like a worthwhile thing to do.</p>
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<p>If your principal motive for wanting to spend the semester at Harvard is to take courses not available at your LAC, I think you should go for it. This is an excellent reason to spend a semester elsewhere. </p>
<p>But don’t do it for the prestige factor. There isn’t any significant prestige in spending a semester at a big-name college. Lots of colleges have exchange programs of various sorts. It’s no big deal.</p>
<p>I think PBK is the same as graduating from college with Latin honors. If you will graduate with high GPA then don’t worry about PBK. You can list graduate from LAC with summa cum laude or something like that in your resume.</p>
<p>Phi Beta Kappa is useful for someone going into academia, in my opinion. Aside from the GPA requirement, a number of chapters have specific course requirements. For example, the requirement for two years of a foreign language is fairly common. Many chapters require college-level mathematics. The course requirements mean that the high GPA was earned in a set of courses that are at least moderately broad and challenging. Also, as a slight counter to grade inflation, at my university, the chapter gets a print-out of students’ GPA’s adjusted in some way according to the average grade in each of the courses the student took. I don’t know the algorithm, and I can see a number of flaws in this practice in general, but it does mean that an A in introductory physics, multi-variable calculus, or organic chemistry tends to count more than an A in a course with A as the average grade (of course, some of those actually are challenging–for example, a very high level math course that is taken only by the most talented students). At Harvard, the students review the transcripts with an eye to determining the level of challenge of the courses, so election is not purely GPA-based.</p>
<p>One of my colleagues, when interviewing for a faculty position, was introduced to the Dean of the college with the line, “Here’s the one that’s Phi Beta Kappa.”</p>
<p>I would not be surprised that Phi Beta Kappa is not of much/any advantage in business.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl is very dismissive of Phi Beta Kappa. However, I think that you need to take into account that Pizzagirl appears to come from a background of advantage, as far as I can tell. If you are already advantaged, it may well make no difference to you. If you come from the lower middle class and have few or no connections to draw upon, it might be very well worthwhile. </p>
<p>Also, for some who are oriented as scholars, the idea of belonging to a long-established group of scholars (well, long-established by American standards) is appealing.</p>
<p>All of that having been said, I will remark that going into my senior year, I thought I was one “distribution-type” class short of meeting the Phi Beta Kappa requirements at my university. I decided to take the math, physics, and chemistry that interested me, rather than filling in a history course. One of my foreign-language profs (unbeknownst to me) went over my transcript and found a course that he persuaded the chapter to count as the “missing” history course. I still appreciate this. It was meaningful to me.</p>
<p>In terms of advice, the name “Harvard” will not bowl anyone over. But you have mentioned other reasons to go there–which may or may not work out, if you go–and you may well be able to bring your GPA up, pre-graduation. In general, I’d say that you should go for the best educational experience, rather than for an honor.</p>
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<p>I can’t think of any advantage it’s ever had. It was such a non-entity of an organization. You got a letter that you got in, you asked your parents to write the check (I think $100), went and had some initiation and mingled with the other students afterwards for an hour and got a pin in the mail. Periodically got some kind of newsletter without any substance. There’s never been any kind of “there” to PBK at all, in my experience. Kind of a shame, really. Other opinions may differ, of course. </p>
<p>I’d still stick it on my resume because why the heck not, and I just checked - I do have it on my LinkedIn profile. I guess it’s a good “smart stamp,” but if you have a good GPA at a top LAC, seems like you already have all the smart stamp you need.</p>
<p>It has been mentioned to me in interviews for elite law jobs (judicial clerkships and law firms that view themselves as cerebral). Business is a different story.</p>
<p>What area? Why Harvard? Is it really the best choice? Or is just because it is Harvard?</p>
<p>I think I gave my PBK key to my mother; never attended any PBK events, and never put it on my resume. Went into academia (for awhile). No one cared.</p>
<p>I think it absolutely matters in academia today, because when I hear people on hiring committees and graduate admissions committees talking about candidates they frequently mention PBK as a positive. Some seeing it as a positive had this honor and some didn’t. Essentially it’s saying you really excelled not only in your own field, but across the board. As Quantmech points out, it also (usually?) means you took a broad range of courses. It may be more important for our kids’ generation than it was for our own, because everything is just so much more competitive.</p>
<p>edit: post 25</p>
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<p><a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/sep/30/latin-honors-cutoffs-rise/[/url]”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/sep/30/latin-honors-cutoffs-rise/</a></p>
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<p>Exactly my experience, PG. Quant’s post indicates that, today, PBK may be evidence of a broad range of challenging courses but, in my day as an English major at a Big 10 U, it was simply based on GPA/class rank. I took the minimum math/science/language required, including a logic course for one of the two math requirements and “Dinosaurs and Other Failures” as one of the two science requirements. PBK was only useful on my bare new-grad, no-experience resume. After that, who cares? It IS etched on your diploma, so first employers who require transcripts/evidence of graduation will see it there anyway.</p>
<p>On the other hand, foolish people have always been impressed that I dropped out of HBS. Go figure.</p>
<p>I have heard that Princeton treats election to Phi Beta Kappa rather seriously, holding the induction ceremony in a room where the faculty senate or a similar group meets (not sure on the details, didn’t go there). These days I think the tour groups have an intro in that room, though.</p>
<p>I think a lot depends on the people in charge of the chapter at the particular university. At mine, the faculty members pay the initial dues for the students, so there is no charge for the honor. In fact, they pay for a dinner, where the students are inducted. The students have to pay for the key, if they want one. Since students at Pizzagirl’s university had to pay their own induction fees, I deduce that the faculty there either didn’t take it particularly seriously or were seriously undercompensated themselves, so they couldn’t afford to pay for the students.</p>
<p>Back to Princeton–I think the faculty there may even buy the keys for the students. And I have to mention–in California, when I was touring pre-schools to select one for QMP for a year, the head of the school I chose mentioned that two of her former students had written back to her that they had their keys–both from Princeton. What I liked about this was the idea that the students in college still thought about their pre-school teacher–as opposed to selecting the pre-school to put QMP on track for Phi Beta Kappa.</p>
<p>Wanted to add: I think that what mini is doing professionally is seriously important and extremely admirable. Yet I also think that a life devoted to scholarship can be significant, depending on the type of scholarship. Not so much of American society revolves around ideas/ideals. I think it is ok to celebrate scholarly orientation.</p>
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<p>I don’t know why I would have ever expected a university to pay for my induction into some outside organization, though. </p>
<p>This is all I see on the website, and keep in mind I’m talking about 25 years ago:
“Each spring, the Northwestern chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, a secret liberal arts honorary society, elects juniors and seniors in Weinberg College to that society. Phi Beta Kappa members are identified in the commencement program. Criteria for election include GPA, the selection of courses, other academic activities, and instructors’ recommendations. Students cannot apply to Phi Beta Kappa, and the details of election criteria and procedures are not made public.”</p>
<p>I had a high GPA in a rigorous double major / honors program, but my other campus activities were only light leadership (sorority, blood drive recruitment, finance director of a campus group) and they weren’t really notable. I don’t think I would have stood out to professors, quite frankly. I don’t know, it felt rather like making a dean’s list – hey, you get a nice honor, you bask for a minute in it, and then that’s about the end of it. It’s interesting to hear the different experiences. I don’t even really remember the induction / reception other than hanging around with a friend of mine who became a noted author / lecturer / pundit.</p>
<p>I should clarify, Pizzagirl: At my university, the funds to pay the students’ initial dues do not come from the university. They come from the faculty Phi Beta Kappa members’ donations, in a form of paying it forward. Also, on our campus, I don’t think Phi Beta Kappa is regarded as a secret society. Maybe nationally it is?</p>
<p>“Wanted to add: I think that what mini is doing professionally is seriously important and extremely admirable. Yet I also think that a life devoted to scholarship can be significant, depending on the type of scholarship. Not so much of American society revolves around ideas/ideals. I think it is ok to celebrate scholarly orientation.”</p>
<p>Thanks. My older d. the scholar more than makes up for it. But I was a scholar, with advanced degrees from Oxford and the University of Chicago. My PBK membership never made any difference at either (whether they do today, I wouldn’t know.) They did offer my parents a special breakfast at graduation, but we didn’t go.</p>
<p>Not having been Phi Beta Kappa myself, I am really loving that some of you smarty-pants high-achievers really don’t think it’s much of anything. :)</p>
<p>Yes, it’s evident from your a number of your posts that you are a scholar, mini. To learn that, all one has to do is to read your posts about learning a language in India. I shouldn’t be suggesting any exclusivity. Furthermore, I think your current work is certainly about ideals–and as I have noted before, I would be miserable at it, even though I really admire it.</p>
<p>Hmm–Oxford probably does not take many (if any) American academic institutions or societies overly seriously. Probably a high fraction of the Americans at Oxford were Phi Beta Kappa members, and would consider it in poor taste to remark on it, in any case. The University of Chicago is certainly all about the life of the mind. I could see them regarding Phi Beta Kappa as irrelevant, anyway.</p>
<p>It’s not that it couldn’t be; it’s that it wasn’t. Does that make sense?</p>
<p>I’m actually more interested in what the OP hopes to study at H., and whether that is really the best place to be studying it.</p>
<p>It probably meant more to me because I had heard of Phi Beta Kappa (and considered it worthwhile to be elected), but made a decision on scholarly principle to enroll for the senior year courses that made the most sense for me, rather than the ones that would ensure election. And as mentioned, a language prof combed my transcript, and got me elected–I had never mentioned it to him, nor my reasons for taking the courses I chose.
If election is a foregone conclusion, it is probably less meaningful.</p>