Talk:National Society of Collegiate Scholars

message: I am an NSCS member and did my research before joining. If the school doesn't announce the ranking, they most likely just go with GPA. But I do know that some schools don't give out student information, but instead, NSCS sends the school the invitations and then the school gives them out to their students. I looked on the NSCS website and saw that Rice University has 119 new members this year and a total of 1,820 (including alumni). NSCS has chapters at over 270 schools nationwide (including Princeton, Cornell, MIT, BYU, UCLA) and at this time has over 750,000 members.
When Googling, I see multiple press releases, Facebook posts, Tweets and articles talking about scholarships that NSCS members have received. They give out $250,000/year in scholarship money. You can find their annual financial report here: http://www.nscs.org/annual-reports. 
Any legitimate honor society has a membership fee. How else would they have money to give scholarships? And they don't just "mass mail" random students. They send a real invitation to the students' home addresses and ALSO an e-mail to some. If you didn't get a hard copy invitation, they probably just don't have your address.
NSCS has a Board of Directors: http://www.nscs.org/board-directors, a National Leadership Council: http://www.nscs.org/national-leadership-council and an office in DC with staff: http://www.nscs.org/national-staff and NSCS members who intern there.
The NSCS Misson Statement is, "NSCS exists to recognize and elevate high-achievers." To fulfill their mission of "recognizing high-achievers", the organization relies on $95 membership fees that unsuspecting students pay which totaled $6,722,960 according to their IRS Form 990 for FY2017. They spent over 85% of their mission or $5,660,589 (IRS Form 990 for FY2017) on their mailings ($1,438,076), office expenses ($2,320,910), and salaries ($1,985,360). They focus on leadership, integrity and community service. Through programs like Planning to Achieve Collegiate Excellence (PACE): http://www.nscs.org/PACE and "I Stand for Integrity" Week: http://www.nscs.org/i-stand-integrity-week, members are encouraged to be active in their communities. 
You can find TONS of photos on their Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/nscs94 and they have videos about NSCS at http://www.youtube.com/thenscs.
If you just do a little research before rushing to judge, you will find out the facts. The facts are that this organization spends over 85% of their revenue on operating expenses, not scholarships. Savvy students shouldn't pay $95 for networking and the scholarship information that students pay for is free with a little research (MEgirl04103 (talk) 21:27, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Legitimacy? 

message: This organization mass-mails their letters to Rice University, according to one of the secretaries who delivers the mail to roughly 10% of the students (Wiess College).   Rice University does NOT reveal class rank and thus the statement "Membership is offered by invitation to first-and second-year college students who rank in the top 20 percent of their class and have a minimum GPA of 3.4" is likely false or partially untrue.  Is their any evidence to back up this claim and/or evidence to the contrary?
--98.200.114.9 (talk) 03:43, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I just received a letter today and it claims (exact quote): "Membership in the Society is for students who are in the top 20 percent of their class with a 3.4 grade point average or better on a 4.0 scale." So I'm not sure what to make of this... they obviously claim to invite the top 20%, even if they don't really. 24.247.162.139 (talk) 16:30, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mass advertisements? 

message: This "Honorary" Board of Regents sounds awfully fishy to me. It makes me think that these board members did not consent to (and may not be aware of) the "honor" of being on the board. If nobody has a source proving otherwise, this section should be removed from the article. Nathan Korth (talk) 23:13, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Honorary board of regents 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
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*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20120609062500/http://www.nscs.org:80/about/faqs/ to http://www.nscs.org/about/faqs/#q5
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Following a recent edit, National Society of Collegiate Scholars now states:
: Membership is offered by invitation to first- and second-year college students who have GPAs of at least 3.4 and are in the top 10% of their class.
Prior to that edit, it had stated:
: Membership is offered by invitation to first- and second-year college students with GPAs of 3.4 and are at the top 20% of their class.
The citation for this claim (archived from 2012) states:
: You must be a first or second year college student in the top 20 percent of your class with a GPA of 3.4 or above.
Per the Orgsync web site (https://orgsync.com/104034/chapter):
: We invite first-and second-year college students who have a GPA of 3.4 or higher. This puts them in the top 20% of students nationally.
Per the ACHS (http://www.achsnatl.org/society.asp?society=nscs) :
: ELIGIBILITY: NSCS invites first and second year students who are in the top 20% of their class with at least a minimum cumulative grade point average of 3.4. NSCS is an interdisciplinary honor society. (updaed 2/21/2017)
I'll let somebody else figure out what this should really state and make the appropriate correction. Fabrickator (talk) 19:08, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  admittance criteria confusion 

message: I am reviewing the sources cited to support the following statement:
Here are the  sources (as of 28 May 2021):
* NSCS page on identifying legit honor societies
* USA Today story on identifying legit honor societies
* BBB entry for NSCS (listed as "Honor Societies Certified by ACHS")
* irs.gov non-profit search
commentary:
# The NSCS page states the criteria for a "legitimate" honor society, and then asserts that NSCS fulfills each of the criteria.  A purely self-serving page, which is only credible to the extent that the reader already accepts that NSCS is a legitimate honor society.
# The USA Today story provides criteria for legitimate honor societies, including membership in ACHS.  The article is partially sourced from a representative of NSCS.  The relevant claim is that NSCS is non-profit, but that's provided by the NSCS representative, not good for much since there's no indication that the claim was verified.
# The BBB entry is a "mish-mosh" of stuff.  It has the "A+" rating from the BBB, and it appears to imply the non-profit status, but again, the information largely comes from the NSCS itself.  There are a handful of reviews provided, which are admittedly interesting, but they are not pertinent to these claims.  However, while the link goes to the BBB, the provided text implies that the link is from ACHS.  Something is awry!
# The IRS non-profit search needs to be updated.  Here's a good link: Details about National Society Of Collegiate Scholars.  Although this page describes a prior  revocation, it at least confirms that NSCS has held non-profit status.  It is the result I got from the Tax Exempt Organization Search page using the search by organization name option.
This is my first cut.  The claims made aren't really much, and I don't doubt that they're true, but the sources generally don't support the claims and they are largely self-serving.
I will eventually get around to doing some further analysis, but I would appreciate additional input from anybody who's watching. Fabrickator (talk) 19:47, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  verifying non-profit accredited tax-exempt claim 

message: Although we have an editor who has declared COI status, I think we are getting edits from people who are not actually disinterested parties.  While members of an organization do not necessarily have to declare a COI status, NSCS members (particularly those in leadership roles) are encouraged to promote the organization and may view making "positive" changes to the NSCS article as a way to promote NSCS, even in the absence of any explicit encouragement to do this.
I'm not formally asking for semi-protection, but if somebody else agrees, I would support it. Fabrickator (talk) 00:20, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  COI issues 

message: The NSCS's former colors were crimson and gold.  In the 2021 rebranding I note that these were switched to Burgundy and Gold, but these do not quite match the new logo.  Which are correct?  Vendors selling graduation cords still list the old colors (at times), and some list the new colors.  I just updated the main article infobox to reflect the current address, chapter count, number of lifetime initiates, address, and new logo.  
Also, is there a publication, in addition to the 3 Pillars blog? Jax MN (talk) 02:17, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Colors 

message: As of 10 Oct 2021 I'm getting a malware / phishing warning when I link to the official website.  I didn't see any further alerts when I went to it, so it may be benign, but it should be noted by the organization for repair.  Jax MN (talk) 02:19, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Malware 

message: As of , the "finances" section states: while the "scholarships" section states   Can you please resolve this discrepancy... and can you also please clarify whether the $189 is in addition to or instead of the fee for basic membership.  Fabrickator (talk) 01:17, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Done.  Nice catch, with that flyer.  I rewrote several passages and clarified the fees with a new section.  I found the Hub, which is the source of that $100M.  That passage was carefully worded to note "allow access to"", which is normally seen as weaselly wording among WP editors.  I figured since it was a direct quote I'd let it stand, also noting that the group of scholars eligible for a piece of that $100M is very limited: only 15 annually, and they must be studying Islamic Studies or a related field. I'm OK with it now. I see the Founder still takes home a pretty salary.  And he isn't the Executive Director...  Good livin'...  Jax MN (talk) 02:08, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems to me that you've stumbled across some information that puts NSCS in quite a bad light. The best take on criticism of NSCS been that it's all subjective whether or not NSCS is particularly different (in a negative sense) from other honorary societies.  Charging an extra $100, only to have people discover that there's very little chance the additional financial aid would be of interest to the typical member (as well as it being objectively overstated as to how much funding is actually available), it's difficult to understand what they were thinking. Fabrickator (talk) 07:39, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Negative light?  I hadn't really considered that.  My entire interest is in providing factual content, fully referenced and clearly summarized from which readers may derive encyclopedic value. Looking at the article, I think readers would appreciate seeing fees delineated in the summaries for all honor societies, where at first I thought it could seem merely promotional.  To the issue at hand, it may be that some potential NSCS members find that the extra $200 to gain a resume review and mentorship support is valuable (even if colleges will do this for free), where the extra $100 for NSCS' mid-level tier, upon inspection, loses its shine.  (In retail we used to call this a "good-better-best" step-up strategy.)  Whether a viable strategy or not, is not my role to judge.  NSCS's founder and staff are well paid, which one would assume is an indication that they are extremely good at what they do, right? Jax MN (talk) 17:02, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  scholarships and membership fee