How to Leverage Honor Society Scholarships!!

So you've been invited to join an honor society at your high school or college? Does the notoriety draw you in? Resume building or networking? Maybe you have too much going on and want to just skip it.

Hit the PAUSE button.

Let me tell you how I received $3000 a year in scholarship money based on my involvement (actually very little involvement) in an honor society. Maybe it will help in your decision.

It was fall 2017. I received a letter (after acquiring a certain amount of credits and a good GPA) inviting me to participate in Phi Theta Kappa (PTK), an honor society for community colleges.

The dues were quite reasonable, something like $30 for the national involvement, and MCCC paid for my local chapter dues, or vice versa. I found out that many scholarships were available to members, and I did not even have to be actively involved!

Like literally, I could have joined, and then just sat back and looked for scholarships. Maybe you can do that as well, if you're short on time.

PTK at MCCC that year took the form of an organized club, as well as a source for volunteerism and learning about resumes and scholarships, and I participated in a few events. Even though I did not HAVE TO BE actively involved to join, I enjoyed some of the camaraderie.

Nationally, PTK hosts a large scholarship application each year with a rigorous essay process that I applied for in December of 2017. Two students from each college were then chosen to represent their school at a luncheon in March, 2018 in Lansing, Michigan. After a kinda long application, I was one of the students chosen to represent our school!

There we were to receive a plaque and medal signifying our achievement within the society, and several lucky students would win scholarships based off of their applications to take to whichever 4-year college they chose. I even got to sit by my school's president!

I did not win any of the scholarships... buuuuuuuuuuut it turns out that PTK came in handy about a year later.

While applying for Eastern Michigan University, I found that they provided a $3000/year scholarship for PTK alumni, and so I gratefully shaved thousands of dollars off my university tuition... all thanks to this honor society in which I didn't even have to be super involved(: