5 Questions Students and Parents Should Ask Before Paying for an Honor Society Invitation
Last Tuesday, I was wiping down the kitchen counter after after-school snacks, half listening to my 16-year-old ramble about AP Bio while he scrolled through his email. He suddenly went quiet, tapped his screen a few times, and looked up at me, grin on his face. “Mom, I got invited to the International Leadership Honor Society. It says I’m in the top 5% of 10th graders nationwide. It’s only $75 to join. Can I pay it with my debit card?”
I paused, because I’ve been here before. Three years ago, my older son got almost the exact same email when he was a sophomore. He was so proud of the recognition, we paid the $80 fee, waited a month for a printed certificate and a generic welcome email, and never heard from the group again. When he was putting together his college applications last year, his guidance counselor told him to cross it right off the activity list – admissions officers don’t give any weight to pay-to-play groups that don’t require any actual work or involvement.
I leaned over to look at the new invite this time. It looked just as official as the first one: fancy letterhead, a wax seal graphic, a line that said “limited invitation only.” It’s easy to see why kids get excited. When you spend all semester studying for tests and pulling up your GPA, getting a letter that says you’re good enough to be invited to an exclusive group feels really good. But I also know how many of these organizations are just for-profit companies buying student GPA data from third parties and spamming every kid with a B average or higher.
We sat down together and went through the list of questions I’ve learned to work through, one by one. First: Is this group recognized by my school’s counseling department? Legitimate honor societies almost always work through your school, and invitations come from a teacher or administrator first. Random emails you get out of the blue are almost always unendorsed. We shot a quick email to my son’s guidance counselor, and 20 minutes later she wrote back saying this specific group wasn’t recognized at our school, and she doesn’t recommend students pay to join. That was our first answer, right there.
Second: What do I actually get for this fee? A lot of these groups list vague benefits like “leadership development” and “college access resources” that turn out to be free articles you can find anywhere online. The legitimate National Honor Society chapter at our high school charges a $20 annual fee, and for that you get regular meetings, group volunteer opportunities, help with scholarship applications, and access to exclusive honor society-only college fairs. When I asked my son to list the benefits the email mentioned, it was just a certificate, a subscription to a monthly e-newsletter, and “eligibility for exclusive scholarships.” When we dug into the scholarships, we found out the application fee for those was another $30, and the odds of winning were lower than most local community scholarships you can apply to for free.
Third: Will this actually help me reach my goals? My son’s big goal right now is applying to engineering programs in a couple years. He thought having another honor society on his application would look good. But I reminded him what the college counselor told my older son: admissions officers care far more about activities you actually participated in, like your part-time job at the local ice cream shop, the robotics club you go to every week, or the volunteer work you do at the community library, than a membership you paid $75 for that doesn’t require any work. If the honor society doesn’t add anything to your life or your resume that you don’t already have, it’s not worth the money.
Fourth: Are there extra fees after I join? A friend of mine has a daughter who joined one of these groups her junior year, paid the $65 joining fee, and then got emails every few months asking for more money: $45 for a graduation cord, $60 for a custom stole, $25 to be considered for a “leadership award.” By the time she graduated, she’d spent almost $200 total, and never went to a single event. Asking up front if there are any mandatory or expected fees down the line saves you from that sunk cost trap, where you keep spending money just because you already spent some.
Fifth: Can I talk to a current student at my school who’s a member? If the group is legitimate and active at your school, there should be at least a handful of upperclassmen who already joined, and they can tell you straight up if it’s worth it. When we asked the International Leadership Honor Society representative for contact info for a student at our school, they couldn’t give us one – they just said they have thousands of members across the country. That’s a pretty clear red flag.
In the end, my son decided not to pay the $75. A month later, he got nominated by his AP Bio teacher for the school’s chapter of the Science National Honor Society, applied, got accepted, and paid the $20 fee. He’s already gone to two clean-up events at the local park and a meeting about summer research opportunities for high schoolers, and he says he’s glad he waited.
It’s not that all paid honor societies are scams. I know a few kids who joined legitimate subject-specific groups that gave them access to networking and scholarship opportunities they couldn’t get anywhere else. But it’s still wild to me how many of these pay-to-play groups target high schoolers and their desire to be recognized, just to make a quick buck. Most days, we’re still figuring it out as we go, but these five questions have kept us from wasting money twice now, and that’s good enough for me.
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