David Trinh

Although I can attest this was not a problem at my school in rural MN, there is apparently a glut of honors programs in many American high schools.  Overall, I agree with the thrust of this article; it’s important to keep honors programs selective so that they actually mean something besides another tassel at graduation.  I would only add that there is an even further harm from the proliferation of honors programs at top-tier high schools that the piece fails to mention, namely, that because many lower-tier schools, like the one I attended, have only NHS, applicants from these lesser schools are at a serious disadvantage during the college admissions process. It’s awfully difficult to compete against students who can spruce up their resumes by choosing from a smorgasbord of honors programs.

Now I’ll concede that I was never in an honors society at my high school–there’s a long tale here to be told, but the short of it is that my name was vetoed by a faculty member who took issue with some of my political opinions–and still managed to make it through the college admission gauntlet relatively unscathed; however, I do remember my lack of departmental awards (non-existent at my high school) and my complete lack of honor society membership cards did cause my interviewer to raise his eyebrows while he was paging through my papers.  This is, of course, just one more advantage that students who go to comparatively better high schools have over others but it seems like one that could be eliminated relatively easily by imposing more stringent requirements on membership or by actually making an effort to introduce these programs in lower-tier schools.