I know joining a club senior year won’t help at all. However our school’s NHS only let Juniors and Seniors join. I missed the deadline to apply for junior year.
Is it pretty much pointless to college admissions to join senior year?
I am not sure how valuable it is either year; it is a fairly common EC after all.
I wouldn’t say it’s common in our school. There are only about 13 members since you have to be either a junior or senior with a Weighted GPA of 3.7 which isn’t an easy feat in our rigorous school.
It’s common nationwide. Plus, different schools have different requirements, so it’s hard for adcoms to know how much of an honor it really is in your school. That’s a pretty rigorous school if only 13 or so kids have a weighted GPA of 3.7 or above.
Yes, it’s pointless. I assume you have more important ECs to talk about, right? Don’t bother with resume padding: It just detracts from the substantive things you’ve done.
At my daughter’s HS, you have to have a high GPA (Like 3.7) and 100+ hours of community service. To me the NHS is like a validation/recognition of all that work…kind of like being on the All Star team.
If you join before you are accepted, then you could send an update (along with mid year grades) to colleges that you are accepted to. You also will have the satisfaction of being a member if that is important to you and I am sure your parents will love it.
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Yep, our school has the exact same requirements haha. Acceptance is in October I believe.
Wow, that NHS sounds like a great EC. What do you do in that club that would interest any college? Do you go out and tutor children with special needs? Raise money to fight illiteracy? Or do you all just sit around and congratulate each other on your great GPAs?
Colleges don’t care about NHS. They already know your grades.
Often members of the NHS tutor other students in school.
They raise money,tutor, community service and stuff. I know it sounds selfish ,but if it won’t help me in college admissions at all, I would rather just focus on my academics and swimming. I have a decent number of hours of volunteer work but 100+ is too much.
Then again I don’t have much EC’s apart from swimming, academic team, video club, and table tennis club.
You get volunteer hours, so if you need some well rounding, this is the place to be.
In our urban area school district, the honor society is considered a bit of a joke. if you have the GPA, you can join. If you want to do volunteer work, there are a million places you can do it - the honor society is just a way for someone to claim that they have a ‘leadership role’ when they don’t have anything else. In other parts of the country, its different. Presumably one reason adcoms handle specific schools/school districts is because that way, they know when something is really an honor and when its resume padding. In your case, it sounds like resume padding. Your current ECs are just fine and sound like they were chosen because you actually enjoy them. They give a picture of who you are. Joining the honor society says nothing, since they already know your grades.