^^ While I agree with you in the abstract, Stuyvesant is not the norm. The most competitive Stuy students are Intel Finalists. Did your high school have ANY Intel Finalists last year? Stuyvesant had 11 Intel Finalists. The level of competition for college applications is enormous – four years ago, about 200 Stuy students (one quarter of the graduating class) applied to Yale and 9 students were accepted. In the big picture, coming from Stuy, small things like NHS, AP Scholar with Honor etc, matter. It helps distinguish one high performing student from another.
What is CMU?
^^ Carnegie Mellon University, which aside from their Computer Science Department, is not on the same academic par with HYPSM.
Students from other schools (with lower stats) and no NHS get into those schools all the time. I think you are overthinking this. NHS is generally NOT just about academic credentials, too. I doubt the colleges would really notice if you are highly qualified in other ways, even if you are from “Stuy”. I am not sure a post from a parent whose kids chose to jump through the NHS hoops is a most reliable indicator on this (because of course they are going to say it is very important). Some students honestly have better things to do with their time and energy.
@JustOneDad … Really?
^^ Really, what?
Carnegie Mellon, sorry… I thought that you were being sarcastic. CMU is one of the world’s best places to study automation and robotics, and is a premier place to study CS.
Um, okay. My kids never played with computers much. Didn’t do the robot thing, either.
Robotics is super fun. 
I was a mentor for my kid’s team, and volunteer now at the FIRST robotics regional and state events. I wish it had been around as a school activity when I was a kid – more fun than marching band and newspaper! Oh… that isn’t what this thread is about, sorry…
There seems to be a disconnect between what OP says about NHS at Stuy and what gibby says about it above. Is it true, as OP says, that some significant number of kids with top grades don’t get in because the board is “picky?” If that’s the case, it may not be a significant red flag after all, if the student’s stats and achievements are otherwise top-notch.
Virtually all Stuyvesant students with GPA’s of 95 or greater – that’s about 15% of each year’s graduating class (about 150 students) – are admitted to NHS if they complete the paperwork.
However, for Stuy students with GPA’s below 94, what the OP says is true. Membership in NHS becomes tricky for those student’s as they are not at the top of their class. FWIW: Stuy does the same thing with AP classes, which are filled on a first-come, first-served basis by filling classes with student’s who have the highest GPA in that subject area until the AP sections are filled. Many Stuyvesant students with grades between 90 and 94 are shut out of AP classes, as well as NHS. As I previously said, it’s a very competitive environment.
I think the more relevant question to ask of the OP: What is your GPA? If the answer is 95+, then not being in NHS will not be a factor for schools like HYPSM. However, coming from Stuyvesant, if an applicant’s GPA is 94 or below – regardless of whether they are NHS or not – that is going to effect their admissions to a school like Yale, because Yale Admissions does consider rank.
This seems like the grade deflation at Princeton… I would wonder if a student who is a 92 at Stuy is outranked by these stellar students and that student may have been the superstar at any other normal school and would have had a much better shot of getting into the elites.
^^ Which is why Stuyvesant has this disclaimer on their High School Profile: http://stuy.enschool.org/ourpages/auto/2013/3/7/37096823/Stuyvesant_Profile%202014-15.pdf
Yeah, you’re 100% going to get rejected if you aren’t part of a specific high school organization that adcoms might recognize.
Jk. I’m being facetious. You’re fine.