Question: I'm a student in the US, about to graduate with a BS in zoology. I've just been invited to join [Phi Beta Kappa](https://www.pbk.org/) and am trying to find some more up-to-date discussions of whether or not it's worth it and I see a lot of conflicting opinions/information. 

It costs $99 for me to join, which some have said reflects poorly on the society, while others say PBK is super prestigious and eye-catching. I've seen some saying it has gotten them positions, and others say its meaningless or they even look down on people who include it on their resumes. 

I'll most likely go to grad school eventually and have no intentions currently to do any work/study outside of the US (I've seen many folks from outside the US saying they see honor societies and have a negative reaction because of Greek Life). Anyone have thoughts on this?

Answer: 
I am looking at this from a European perspective.
Also I focus on the perception and not whether this is accurate, which does not matter that much – whether you like it or not.
You can neither expect readers to research this detail of your CV to fully understand it nor to suppress subconscious bias by the impression they get from items they do not fully understand.

As confirmed by some of the comments by other European members here, the vast majority of information of US Greek-letter societies that trickle over to Europe is about drug abuse, sexual misconduct, dehumanising initiation rituals, and nepotism. Therefore mentioning a membership in such an organisation (without any further explanation) risks leaving a bad impression. At the very least I would try to mitigate the risk by explicitly denoting it as an honour society – which can only have so much effect since that’s not a protected term.

Also, while a little Internet research suffices to debunk the worst associations, it does not leave the best impression:

* It’s surprisingly difficult to find a recent independent characterisation on this society. You mainly find self-representation and Wikipedia (which is currently dominated by self-representation). The best you can find with reasonable effort are [two](https://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/26/nyregion/phi-beta-kappa-key-being-turned-down-by-many-honorees.html) [articles](https://www.post-gazette.com/news/education/2005/11/04/Phi-beta-what-Students-saying-no-to-elite-honor-society/stories/200511040225) from 1996 and 2005, respectively, about declining membership and recognition, in which the society leaves a rather entitled impression. Also, this very question and others on this site are already amongst the first things you find. This somewhat suggests that the society has since evaporated into meaninglessness.
* The society’s main activity appears to be selecting and recruiting new members and documenting their achievements, which strikes me as awkwardly circular. There a few awards, scholarships, and fellowships, but these seem secondary.
* The primary selection criterion seems to be grades, scholarly achievements, and learning another language, which should be featured on your CV anyway. It seems like a society that charges mountains to put a golden badge on them stating their height (analogy stolen from [Leonard Cohen](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/oct/14/leonard-cohen-giving-nobel-to-bob-dylan-like-pinning-medal-on-everest)). Thus, listing membership appears to be somewhat redundant.

Mind that this is just an impression (after all the difficulty of finding information from reliable sources is one of the things that form this impression), but at the very least it suggests a considerable marketing failure.
Save your money. At best it's meaningless and at worse it associates you with all the negative connotations of Greek society and none of the benefits (such as the social life and a network of close friends and contacts you get to know over the many years at school).

I say it's meaningless because **everything that it purports to represent** - a high GPA, the acclaim of faculty, academic achievement - **can be fully represented without it**. Simply including your transcript or reporting your GPA, including letters of recommendation from faculty, and reporting on publications, research awards, and so on, covers every base. 

Therefore, the only remaining piece of information that joining it tells me is that you respond to phishing-like emails to collect a hundred bucks.

And frankly, I've been a faculty member at two American departments, one of which was selective and the other of which was highly selective (in the top ten most selective in the US), and I had no idea you supposedly get access to this through faculty nomination. There's been a lot of answers focusing on Europeans who wouldn't know that it's supposedly a good thing, but I've been in the US academic system basically my whole life, and I also don't know that.