National Society of Collegiate Scholars

[Ana1]

This process is identical with the phony reviews on amazon.com. Employees of a company become members and post praising their product/book, or dissing a competitor. Sometimes they post in a different thread attempting to legitimize themselves. An author was actually busted for writing reviews for his own books. Obvisouly all these posters in this thread are phonies and I do not believe anyhing about them. There are 10 and more new members just posting suddenly on this thread. How many other threads have you seen in CC that suddenly all the new posters decided to post?

[GrumFrum]

Ok, I'm not some brand new person who just joined CC, and I'm a member of NSCS. It's not a scam. My school's chapter is fairly large and is very active. I know several people who have won scholarships from the organization.

[arcadefire1027]

This organization is clearly a scam. They've sent me several E-mails trying to scare me into joining with phrases like "Can you really afford not to join in this economy?" etc.

No legitimate honors society would say these things.

[arcadefire1027]

Here's an example of an E-mail they just sent me:

"Dear Casey,

I am writing because the deadline is now past and we never received your CONFIRMATION accepting membership in The National Society of Collegiate Scholars (NSCS).

You are one of the few nominees we have not yet heard from.

The good news is, the Society's Board of Directors, after much discussion, is permitting a short extension of the membership confirmation deadline to allow those who have yet to respond to confirm their membership."

"You are one of the few nominees we have not yet heard from" is clearly a lie, and the fact that they're extending their deadline (I'm pretty sure they've extended it before) also shows it's bogus. And, by the way, a 3.4 GPA is really eligible for the best honors society out there? Come on now..

[mantori.suzuki]

Everyone on this forum who says it's for real has fewer than 10 posts.

I just thought that was worth repeating a couple of times.

SCAM.

[Inthebiz]

NSCS is not a scam BUT I would question its value. I've worked with academically talented college students for more than 15 years and when they ask me whether they should join this organization I tell them to weigh the benefits against the costs. I also tell them they will most likely be invited to join many honor societies while they are undergraduates and, unless their funds are limitless, they might want to wait until they are invited to join Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi or the honor societies in their discipline that carry far more prestige and potential benefits.

And certainly the emails the posters above received in recent days would make me think twice. In my opinion, pressure techniques and honor societies do not go together.

[timely]

The registrars from every school submit the list of eligible students.

Since when are registrars allowed to release private information on students? The Privacy Act would not allow a school registrar to send a student's name, address, and GPA to an outside organization. Also, many of my homeschooled friends' kids have gotten invitations. I wonder who submitted them?

[fireflyscout]

Unless a parent or student specifically opts out, school districts can provide cerrtain student information (name, address, phone, grade, BUT NOT GPA) to outside groups. I believe College Board and ACT sell their mailing lists, also.

[timely]

I knew that College Board (and I'm sure ACT, too) sold their lists, but I thought that would be pretty weird that they could release GPA's!