Didn't know if you all have experience with this sort of thing, so here goes: Which of those "pay up for a book with your biography and about 50,000 others" deals that says that if you submit your information in order to qualify for a scholarship (you don't necessarily need to pay for the book to qualify) is the real deal and which are brown-nosing scams trying to get you in a better mood to give them money?

Specifically, "The National Dean's List", but if you know of any others, that'd be great, too. I will resume my search on the internetz.

Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society is legit (or they're really, really good at faking it (and when I say "really, really good at faking it", I mean porn-star actress quality ( not that I would know (wtf, why am I commenting on my comments (MAKE IT STOP AHHHH!!!!!111oneone))))).

Anyway...

Ahh yes. The old "you did something halfway decent, so we'll LET you pay us money to put your name on this list" scams.... lol.
Reminds me of the old "Who's Who" in high school. Bastards... Tricking people into joining dumb 'honor' societies.
Oh well, makes them money!

I try to vary my delimiters (such as using brackets inside of parenthesis {like this}) instead.

Indentation helps too.


Sadly, there are honors societies here on campus similar in nature to the "add-your-name-to-a-list mail-order variety". The two I was foolish enough to join strike me as hollow, their membership "contributing" barely enough to "remain active".

My advice to UMR n00bs that want to distinguish themselves in preparation for a career immediately after graduation: join chapters of professional interest groups like ACM, IEEE, AIAA, ASM, etc. You'll learn something at most of the meetings and have far better opportunities to network with both your peers and the outside world. If you have the time, student design teams are also generally worthwhile experiences.

The bottom line: do something that you can look back on and say "that was fun and I learned something". Chatting with a bunch of other kids who also have a high GPA rarely qualifies: there's no driving purpose for the group, such as an upcoming competition or listening to someone talk about electromagnetics. Sure, these societies claim to have (often philanthropic) goals, but most of the time they are merely paid lip service.

Triumph the comic dog saying "You are a huge nerd" just popped into my head...