Community college students transferring to a four-year institution snatch any resume-building opportunity that walks past their mailbox. Honor societies seem to be the most enticing – and lucrative.

According to Phi Theta Kappa’s official website, the international honor society has accumulated around $90 million. The society makes this sum by subjecting an $85 fee to each member that acquires a required GPA determined by an institution’s chapter. Members are inducted once their fees have been approved.

Eliana Penafiel, vice-president of Elgin Community College’s PTK chapter, said more than 300 students hold a current paid-membership. Around 60 of those students are actually active members.

For me, this seems troubling. Community college students want two things out of PTK, scholarships and to add to their credibility and the facade of work ethic. Students are not realizing that a grocery list of honor societies and programs do not tempt admissions or employers into recruiting them. It just shows that one was lured into a business.

I dug myself into that same hole of guilt worth $300, and now I want out. These are contracts, and I should have checked what I was getting myself into.

I have been attending Waubonsee Community College and ECC for the past semester, and I have been ensnared into national honor societies offered by both colleges. Whether it was PTK, a leadership and success program, or the National Communication Association, none have given back scholarships or a sense of knowledge or skills that I could not have gotten someplace else.

I left them my money and they wasted my time.

This year was the first for Waubonsee to add the dominating National Society of Leadership and Success to their institution; the college is now among the 504 that offer the program. According to Waubonsee’s Student Life Manager Mary Tosch, out of the 3,000 new and returning students that were invited into the society in the fall, exactly 525 accepted and paid the $85 fee; similar to PTK’s – it seems that there’s a routine price for manipulating students.

Once the fee was paid, I was invited to an orientation, where I learned that I was only pre-inducted. This wicked word sent me packed with regret and feeling like a victim to gullibility. To become inducted I had to course myself through a variety of time-consuming lectures and networking teams. This included watching Hilary Duff talk about her road to success and asking other students what is stressing them out this week.

Tosch said out of the 525 students that paid in the fall, only 160 became inducted members. And out of the 30 that paid in the spring, a much smaller percentage treaded the way into induction.

Another society, made by the National Communication Association, never sent me a notice or letter after I had sent a $50 check.

The overbearing problem is that these organizations taught me close to nothing that a normal, free and tangible student life program would have.

For both honor societies, the benefits are there but are charmless and limited.

Penafiel will be receiving a few thousand dollars in scholarships from PTK to fund her education at North Central College. But this is not a typical acquirable amount. Sometimes one has to shop around colleges just to get a clear cost-effective choice.

“Private schools are [easier] to get a scholarship,” Penafiel said.

If a member had plans to fund a portion of his tuition through PTK or any other national society scholarship, good luck.

“UIC doesn’t really offer any, NIU took away the scholarship, U of I is the one that is competitive,” Penafiel said. “In public school there is not that much, especially [with] the budget crisis.”

Penafiel referred me to collegefish.org, PTK’s official scholarship search engine. One would type in their credentials, such as GPA, religion, co-curricular activities and the site would list some qualifying scholarships. For University of Missouri, where I’ll be attending in the fall, there was only one that was need-based and it had expired in February.

Unless there are game plans and background checks of a national society begging for one’s membership, do not pay for it. A reel of honor societies on a resume just re emphasizes one’s good grades. They do not reveal any dedication, morals or ethics. In order to reap benefits, one has to stay active and involved.

“Chances are they may or may not have heard of that organization,” Tosch said. “I think the most important piece with any student organization is for the student to be able to articulate – what did you learn, what did you gain from this and how are you educating someone about what that means. Just to see a list of student organizations doesn’t tell someone something.”