Participation is often an excellent way to meet other students of your major, which is often the first step towards forming good project and study groups. Social activities encourage student to meet engineers from different majors as well. And industry often requires that engineers be able to work effectively with engineers from different fields. Opportunities also exist for engineering majors to meet students from different schools in a wide range of regional and section conferences. Academic activities offered are as diverse as the social activities.
Some societies offer tutoring.
Others operate an exam file service. On the border between academic and career areas are resume-writing seminars, professional and academic forums, internship information sessions, and even large corporate sponsored job fairs. These activities are offered in varying degrees across many engineering campuses, but they are not as well attended as they should be. Course work demands often have priority. But even if you choose not to join on of the engineering societies, look into participating in their programs.