Pre-Med 101: Does joining an honor society help me get into medical school? 

I’m sure by now many of you have received invitations to join an honor society. After all you are some of the best and brightest students around! But given that most of these honor societies require you to pay an initial membership fee, is it worth it to join? Will joining some of the “elite” honor societies help your chances of getting into medical school? Thats what we are going to cover in this Pre med 101 article!

Will joining an honor society help me get into medical school?

The short answer is no. Most honor societies aren’t that exclusive and hard to get into. Each honor society is a bit different but in general they will invite anyone who has above a certain GPA. And often this GPA isn’t that high to begin with! Joining one of these societies on its own does little to nothing for your chances to getting into medical school. After all, the medical schools will already know your GPA and what kind of student you are from your grades and MCAT score.

Being part of an honor society does nothing for your chances of getting into medical school. I was part of six different honor societies when I applied for medical school, and it had absolutely zero impact on me getting accepted. In fact it was never even brought up once during my interview. The truth is medical schools have a bunch of other things they care about when considering an applicant, and these are the things you should be focusing your time on. When I first started getting invitations to join honor societies I was very excited as a pre med. I would do whatever it took to get into medical school so I accepted almost every honor society I was invited to at first, even though it cost alot of money. I learned the hard way that being part of an honor society (or even six!) wont improve chances of getting accepted. Many honor societies cost ALOT of money to join, usually in the range of $70-100. So I would highly recommend against joining multiple honor societies if you think that it will improve your chances of getting accepted to medical school, because it wont.

Honor societies can provide some benefits however…

I would like to mention that there are some benefits that you can obtain from being part of an honor society that may interest you. These benefits vary between honor societies but most honor societies provide similar benefits. Some of these benefits include..

• scholarships for its members
• study abroad programs
• networking opportunities
• the opportunity for leadership positions.

All of the benefits from honor societies are opportunistic in nature and thus require you to act on them to get their benefits. Once again, simply being a part of an honor society does nothing for you. But finding use out of some of the opportunities it offers may be worth the effort. If you were to join an honor society and wanted to make the most out of it for getting into medical school then I would recommend trying to achieve some leadership position in the organization. Possibly your school has a local chapter that you can be the president of. Also if they offer a study abroad program that is suited for pre-meds, I suggest taking part of that if you can afford it.

Summary

Being part of an honor society will most likely not affect your chances of getting into medical school. It can improve your chances of getting into medical school if you make the most out of the opportunities it may offer you. However, for the amount of money that most honor societies require for membership, I would recommend against joining them. There are many better and cheaper (usually free) alternatives out there to help boost the quality of your medical school application.

I hope you found this advice helpful! Tell us what you think by leaving a comment down below! For more pre-med tips and advice, make sure to subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Facebook, twitter, and pinterest!