How important are honor societies?

[doctorpurple]

I want to know how of big of a positive impact being part of an honor society is in residency competitiveness. I'm in the top quartile of my class (2nd year will be a third year in a 6 weeks) but didnt get the honor society membership because they only considered first year grades and my first year grades are lower and my ranking was slightly lower back then. I've improved it this year and got in the top 25%. Today I saw people wearing sigma sigma phi pins and it made me sad that I didn't make it and frustrsted that i missed out on that opportunity. I am wondering how big of positive impact does being a member of honor society is when it comes to residency. I'm not particularly planning on applying to very competitive ones. Right now I'm interested in Neurology, endocrinology or maybe general surgery.

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[bigyihoroi]

Don't worry about it. None except one PD (an allopathic one) mentioned anything about sigma sigma phi. It will certainly help if you have sub-par board score, but it's meaningless if you do well on board and rock your clinicals

 

[sylvanthus]

In 23 residency interviews, not a single PD mentioned anything about me being in SSP.

 

[NeuroLAX]

Don't worry about it. None except one PD (an allopathic one) mentioned anything about sigma sigma phi. It will certainly help if you have sub-par board score, but it's meaningless if you do well on board and rock your clinicals

Granted this would be an n=1 scenario, but what was their reaction?

 

[bigyihoroi]

Granted this would be an n=1 scenario, but what was their reaction?

PD was basically impressed that I was in a national honor society. That's it...not like he knew what it really means but it's "honor" and it sounds good...haha

 

[se20001984]

dont you pay like a 100$ to join?lol

 

[sylvanthus]

If you can get it go for it. It is listed right next to AOA on ERAS. If you cant dont worry its not that big of a deal. However, everything helps.

 

[NeuroLAX]

If you can get it go for it. It is listed right next to AOA on ERAS. If you cant dont worry its not that big of a deal. However, everything helps.

That's reasonable. How is SSP set up at your school? At mine we need to meet certain academic requirements as well as participation in at least two SSP community service events.

 

[sylvanthus]

That's reasonable. How is SSP set up at your school? At mine we need to meet certain academic requirements as well as participation in at least two SSP community service events.

Combo of academic and service and approval from the Dean. Generally top 25%. We actually had people too lazy to write a paragraph to get in who were eligible though, so went down further on the rank list.

 

[ensuii]

Had it mentioned in 1 of 13 of my allopathic interviews: "___ Step 1, ___ Step 2, ssp, blah blah." It's just another piece of the application. If you can get it without busting your back over it, go for it. If you don't get it, no biggie.

 

[dozitgetchahi]

My school doesn't even have an SSP chapter (and no class rank either), and not having it didn't seem to affect my matching much.

 

[cliquesh]

I interviewed at nearly 30 programs and not one interviewer mentioned anything about sigma sigma phi. It might mean something to AOA programs, but not Acgme programs.

 

[Hokie06]

.

 

[NeurologyDO]

If you're not planning on applying to a competitive residency, then don't even worry about it 😛 Unless you want to go to Harvard, in which case it would certainly have helped.

But remember, most people don't get into sigma sigma phi. And they still match 🙂

 

[BigSib]

Doesn't matter. Refer to http://www.nrmp.org/data/programresultsbyspecialty2012.pdf AOA and other societies are way down at the bottom.

 

[Instatewaiter]

If you can get it go for it. It is listed right next to AOA on ERAS. If you cant dont worry its not that big of a deal. However, everything helps.

Doesn't matter. Refer to http://www.nrmp.org/data/programresultsbyspecialty2012.pdf AOA and other societies are way down at the bottom.

AOA (and I imagine SSP) does matter a decent amount to some people. Is it going to make up for failing to boards... definitely not.

That said, AOA (and it sounds like SSP) is kind of stupid how they "elect" people. At many schools, they take the top 25% of the class and then take into consideration their service records etc. So someone could be in the top 10% of the class and not make AOA.

So get it if you can, don't sweat it if you don't.