The National Society of High School Scholars (NSHSS) is a for-profit national organization established in 2002 and claims 500,000 members. Students pay an individual fee of $60 to join; fee-waivers are offered to eligible students. NSHSS is operated from a corporate office in Atlanta, Georgia and doesn’t have local chapters. Questions about NSHSS practices posed to their media representative, Yun Mi Ye, went unanswered. According to their website, NSSHS administers some scholarships provided by outside organizations that are available only to NSHH members, such as a $1,000 Griffith Scholarship and scholarships funded by the clothing store, Abercrombie and Fitch.
While NSHSS’s website states that students must be nominated by a high school counselor for membership, a number of high schools around the country report that students receive invitations to join NSHSS without any school nomination.
Leigh Sherrill, College Counselor at Assumption High School in Kentucky, reported that her school does not nominate students for NSHSS, although every year students show her their NSHSS invitation. Sherrill doesn’t know where NSHSS finds students’ home addresses or school information.
Whether or not a student chooses to become a member of any honor society should be based on the organization’s agenda beyond an offer of scholarships. Given the number of members of California Scholarship Federation (CSF), for example, less than half of one-percent of the members receives a scholarship each year.
The Better Business Bureau of Atlanta advises students to be careful in purchasing memberships for honors which they have not been nominated for by a select committee. These recognitions, often referred to as Vanity Awards, should be checked out thoroughly before a payment is made to an organization http://www.bbb.org/us/article/vanity-pitches-dont-believe-the-hype-317.
The National Society of High School Scholars lists membership services on its website, but many of these services are available to anyone, without paying a fee--such as college and scholarship searches.
All students can easily access scholarship information through online search engines such as the popular Fastweb. Another scholarship search engine, Kaarme, was established by a group of parents to provide an opportunity for students to search for scholarships on a secure site that doesn’t sell their data base to other companies.
Kaarme’s CEO Mark North explained that their website for students and counselors comes with privacy protection and with full disclosure of what information is shared with colleges and college service providers. Kaarme has a privacy policy that explicitly states that no information is sold to a third-party, a protection North believes is not offered by other companies who collect student data. When students receive offers of membership from unsolicited organizations, they should be concerned that a company may have bought their information from another party.
Randall Dieke, Vice-President of Enrollment Management and University Institutional Research at New York University, was asked whether membership in an honors society is noted by his admissions officers. Dieke said, "I believe only students can decide if membership in one of the many honor societies is worth the investment for them. I think there are a number of great opportunities for students to be recognized, affiliate with students with like interests, earn scholarships, etc., so I believe there can be benefits associated with joining. In terms of the NYU admissions process, the number of honor societies in which a student participates is not a part of the evaluation process. We would consider participation in the context of the rest of the application along with a review of their academic credentials, rigor of the high school curriculum, and other activities and experiences. We take a holistic review of an applicant’s credentials."
As students try to build a resume that will shine in a crowd of tens of thousands of college applicants, honor society membership clearly doesn’t provide a student with a unique distinction or a realistic expectation of getting a scholarship. When students apply to college their application reveals a complete academic record and all their additional extracurricular activities, experiences, or talents. Paying a fee for a distinction in and of itself does not set a student apart from others who have done the same.
Schools and students, as NYU representative Dieke stated, should look for other values in honor society memberships. And given the opportunity by an honor society to purchase a gold tassel or silk stole for graduation day, an individual school should decide whether to make that purchase, not teens who may not realize who ultimately benefits from their honor.
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