On March 4th, starting at 6 p.m., high-achieving LHS students were inducted into LHS’s chapter of the National Honors Society. This honor is bestowed only to the most outstanding students who exemplify NHS’s values of scholarship, service, character, and leadership.
The ceremony started with a few words from the NHS officers, all describing a different value of NHS and lighting one of the five candles. Once this segment ended, we were on to the longest part of the ceremony: the speeches and inductions.
Once the inductor finished their speech, their inductee walked up on stage, signed their name in a book, and collected their NHS pin and library card. After all of the speeches commenced and we recited the NHS pledge, we “lit” our candles and passed the flame to the person next to us.
Being in NHS is an amazing opportunity that I am grateful to now have.
For sophomores or juniors curious about the requirements for NHS at LHS, here are what you need:
Scholarship
A minimum GPA of 3.5 is the baseline requirement for NHS. All students who have a GPA 3.5+ will receive an email stating that they are eligible to apply to NHS in November.
Service
A cornerstone of NHS is service, meaning volunteer work. Because of this value, applicants are required to have volunteer hours. Applicants must have two short term volunteer projects and one long term volunteer project.
Each short term volunteer project must be less than 20 hours over less than 2 months. The long term volunteer project requires a minimum of 20 hours over a minimum of 2 months. To confirm these volunteer hours, applicants must have an adult supervisor (of whom they are not related) sign off on the application. It is important to note that none of these volunteer projects can be paid.
Leadership
Another value of NHS is leadership. This one is pretty self-explanatory. This can be any sort of leadership positions that applicants have held, including but not limited to, being the president of a school organization (must be a member for at least one year), captain of a sports team, tutor, etc. As long as you get it signed off by an adult supervisor, you are set.
Character
Character is an important part of NHS and proves that aside from academics and extracurriculars, you are someone they want in NHS. Meaning, if you have detentions or are a disrespectful person, you most likely won’t get in.
To fulfill this requirement you must have two teacher recommendations and be an active member of two school organizations, one of which you must be a part of for over a year. This means join clubs! A factor they will definitely look at is the date of when you are a part of the club, so do not join a club the day before the due date.
Like for college, you must also get two teacher recommendations. I recommend picking the teachers you felt closest with, it also helps if you did good in their class. Don’t pick a teacher whose class you were late to everyday, duh!
Essays
The last requirement for application to NHS is two essays. This year the essays were on leadership and a prospective service project you’d like to complete. I am not sure if the prompts change, so be ready for anything.
Congratulations to those inducted and best of luck to those looking to apply next year!