5 Questions to Ask Before Paying for That Honor Society Invitation
The gold embossed envelope landed on our kitchen table alongside a crumpled soccer uniform and a half-eaten granola bar last Tuesday. My 11th grader Lila leaned against the counter, grinning, and tapped the return address. “I got selected,” she said. “For this national honor society. It’s only $65 to join.”
I didn’t say no right away. I’d been here before. Three years earlier, my older son Jake pulled the exact same kind of invite out of his backpack when he was a junior. We’d just talked about buffing up his college applications, so he was thrilled to be recognized as one of the top students in the country. We paid the $78 membership fee, waited a month, and got a thin envelope back with a flimsy certificate, a tiny lapel pin that fell off his backpack within a week, and a login for a website that linked to the same free scholarship lists he already found through the College Board. He never logged in again. It was just a waste of money, and it left him a little embarrassed that he’d fallen for the hype.
So when Lila pulled out her invite, I pulled out a chair and said let’s walk through a few things before we swipe the card. These questions didn’t take more than 10 minutes to work through, and they helped Lila make her own call instead of me just saying no.
First, I asked her what the actual selection criteria were. The envelope said it was for “top high school students across the nation,” which sounds impressive until you dig for fine print. Lila pulled up the organization’s website on her phone and scrolled all the way to the bottom: they invite any student with a 3.0 GPA or higher. That means more than half of all high school students in the U.S. qualify. This wasn’t an honor for a small group of standout kids – it was a mass mailing to as many students as they could reach. We compared it to the school-affiliated National Honor Society, which requires teacher recommendations, 10 hours of service each semester, and a 3.5 GPA minimum to join, and it’s free through the school. That’s the kind of selective honor colleges actually notice.
Second, what exactly am I getting for that $65? We read the benefits list out loud: membership certificate, lapel pin, access to exclusive scholarships, permission to list the membership on college applications. I asked Lila if the exclusive scholarships were only for members, or if anyone could apply. A 5-minute search showed that 9 out of 10 scholarships listed on the site were open to any student, regardless of membership. I have a friend who works in undergraduate admissions at a nearby public university, and she told me last year that counselors don’t give any weight to these paid honor societies. They know anyone can join if they pay the fee, so it doesn’t tell them anything new about a student that their GPA and existing extracurriculars don’t already.
Third, does this actually help with what you want right now? Lila wants to study environmental science, and she’s already secretary of her school’s environmental club, volunteers two hours a week at the local nature reserve, and is leading a project to add more recycling bins to the football stadium. Adding this generic honor society membership to her application wasn’t going to tell admissions officers anything they wouldn’t already learn from that work. If she’d been looking for networking with other students in her field or leadership experience, this organization offered no in-person events, no group projects, no opportunities to build skills – just a title you pay for.
Fourth, is this connected to your school, or do they just have your information? Lila thought it had to be school-endorsed because the envelope had her full name and school printed right on the front. But most of these organizations buy student contact data from testing companies like the ACT and College Board, when students check the box that allows third parties to share their information. The school doesn’t get a cut, doesn’t endorse the group, and doesn’t have any connection to it. A friend of mine’s 10th grader once paid $95 of his own birthday money for one of these groups because he thought it was a required program from his school’s counseling office, and didn’t realize his mistake until he asked a counselor a month later.
Fifth, can I get the same benefits for free somewhere else? Lila wanted a line on her resume for an honor – she already gets honor roll recognition for free through her school, and that means far more to colleges. She wanted access to curated scholarship lists – she already has a free account on Going Merry that sends her customized leads every week. She wanted a fun pin for her graduation cap – the school gives out free honor cords to honor roll students anyway. Every benefit the organization advertised was already available to her for no cost.
Lila folded the invitation back up and dropped it in the recycling. We put the $65 we would have spent toward the AP Biology review book she needs for next semester.
It’s not that all honor societies are bad. I know legitimate, selective groups like Phi Beta Kappa for college undergrads, or major-specific honor societies that offer real networking and scholarship opportunities for students in specific fields. Those are usually low-cost and actually selective, so they can be worth the fee. But 9 times out of 10, the random fancy envelope that shows up in your 16-year-old’s backpack is just pay-to-play marketing preying on kids who are excited to be recognized and nervous about college applications.
Last week, Lila got another honor society invite in her email. She just forwarded it to me with an eye-roll emoji and asked if we needed to go through the questions. I wrote back “junk folder” and that was that. It’s turned into a small, useful lesson: just because someone says you’re special enough to join doesn’t mean it’s worth your money. We still get a new invite every couple of months, and that’s fine. It’s just another chance to practice checking the fine print before we spend.
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