Who doesn’t love to be rewarded for their hard work? If you crave leadership and academic success, you’re on HonorSociety.org’s radar. Being smart and driven comes with perks.
1. A Welcome Ego Boost
An invitation from HonorSociety.org means that somebody somewhere loves you. You can get invited in a trinity of ways: through a professor’s recommendation, school partnership or your own killer application. This means your professor loves you, your university has chosen you as one of its shining angels or HonorSociety.org knows you’re somethin’ special. Yes, this invitation is tangible evidence that you rock. It is also frameable.
2. Internet Octopus
The network that HonorSociety.org offers through membership is nothing less than an Internet Octopus. Its members span across hundreds of campuses nationwide and its alumni are even farther across oceans. If you don’t have a private jet, then you may think this information useless. But HonorSociety.org maximizes technology’s potential to connect its members no matter where they try to hide.
3. Field Trips: Throwback to Middle School
PSA: Field trips do not end in middle school or even high school. They’re happening right now, for college students just like us! HonorSociety.org members meet up in glam cities—L.A. last year and D.C. this year—to connect face-to-face and explore. Michael Moradian, Executive Director, said, “Members love that they… get to connect while meeting new friends, networking, and exploring a new city they’ve never been in.”
4. Adventure Awaits
When college students hear “abroad,” they immediately think Europe, crepes and berets in Paris and Ed Sheeran. Yes, in that order. But this society, partnered with ThinkImpact, is asking for volunteers to test their leadership skills, problem solving and compassion in places that aren’t cliché, like rural African areas and South and Central America. What HonorSociety.org wants is to churn out social entrepreneurs with an insatiable taste for new adventure.
5. Whole New Level of Summer Vacation
They house you. They give you transportation. They set up activities for you and other interns. They get you that much closer to your dream career. Through select partnerships, HonorSociety.org has organized 10 global programs through which students hold internships around the world. Monica Woodhams, Marketing Director, said, “It’s a huge opportunity for professional excursion but also excursion to what the world has to offer culturally.” The real selling point: they get you out of the house with your mom and dad. (Nobody tell my mom I said that.)
6. The “You and I” in Community and Other Terrible Puns
It seems like getting invited to HonorSociety.org is all about you. And, don’t get me wrong, I’m in agreement with your mom that you are surely a superstar. But at the core of this society is community service and philanthropy. Membership is a platform to meet some friends, or maybe some cuties, and have fun, but it can also be a platform to make a real change in the world. One example: HonorSociety.org members raised over $21,000 for the American Red Cross this spring.
7. Starting a New Chapter in Your Life: Not a Metaphor
If, like my grandma, you curse technology out of outrage for corrupting human relationships and having such damn small font, you want to connect with students, faculty and alumni in person. If there’s not a chapter on campus, then I dare you to build your own from the ground up. Why, yes, it does seem terrifying. But HonorSociety.org will provide the tools and, by the end, you’ll have so much hands-on leadership and PR experience that it may even be worth your friends calling you an overachiever.
8. Celeb Advice Fo’ Free
Have you ever wanted advice from, say, past World Cup soccer player Cobi Jones or L.A. mayor Antonio Villaraigosa? You could make this dream come true. Both are honorary members of HonorSociety.org, and have held webinars for members. The celeb list goes on! This society strives to provide its members with career tools, technology programs and—more importantly—celebrity face time with inspirational figures that are kind of a big deal.
9. “Not a Time Suck” and Other Surprises
In college, there is one code we all live by: “Time is money, money is power, power is pizza.” Oh, April Ludgate, you are our queen. Honor societies, or anything really that requires you to be honorable instead of an alcoholic, seem untrustworthy and taxing to our young, rowdy and commitment-phobe selves. But HonorSociety.org is no chaperone or overbearing mother. Michael explains the amount of participation required: zero. “What it comes down to is the individual. How much [you] want to participate. It can be as much or as hands-off as you feel like.” Once you’re in, you’re in.
10. Grad Schools as Desperate for You as the Student Body is on Weekends
Membership to and experience through HonorSociety.org, or any honor society, is like the easiest pick-up line for grad schools. They love to hear it. Whether it be in your statement of purpose, or in your interview for a job that you’d marry if it was legal, make sure to slip this into the conversation. A lot. Woodhams translates what membership means to employers or grad school boards. “It means you know the material [you] learned in school and weren’t afraid to know what it means to be a leader on campus, and on a national and academic level.”
Find out how you can get rewarded for your genius and apply for membership here.
