Are programs like National Honor Society really worth it?

Answered

If you are applying to competitive colleges, then belonging to NHS or being an officer of NHS doesn't carry much clout, prestige, or weight on your college admissions application.

Why? Because there are over 1 million NHS members in America and at least 120,000 officers of the club (if you figure 30,000 High schools X 4 (Pres., VP, Secy, Treasurer).

At the same time, only about 15,000 HS students matriculate into Ivy League colleges. Most of these admit only putting NHS on their EC activity list as a "filler". What got them admitted has more to do with other ECs that have an impact on their target audience like their community, a charity, or self-improvement.

If you personally spend 200-500 hours honing a unique EC that you are really good at, that will be a far better use of your time.

The same can be said about your course rigor. Colleges are pretty agnostic as to whether you take 10 APs, 15 APs or 20. You don't have a 2X 200% better chance of getting into a college because you took twice as many APs. But colleges like to see that you challenged yourself and moved out of your comfort zone to take the hardest curriculum you could muster. So if you are applying as a CS major and took 3 add'l math classes and 3 add'l programming classes at a community college over the summers, that carries a lot of weight in the intellectual vitality scorecard and you look more serious as an applicant than someone that is doing what everyone else is doing and loading up on HS Aps and joining every club at school and trying to get elected into HS leadership positions. It's far better to join a school board or a community service board where you have to interact with real executives and your community to get things done than to hold court in HS and spin your wheels with the school administrative bureaucracy.

Hope this helps you prioritize your free time outside of the classroom and homework time.