In the fall of each school year, junior and senior students maintaining a grade point average of 3.5 or higher will be invited to complete a Candidate Information Form (CIF) for National Honor Society, providing they attended Ashland High School the previous semester. An exception to this would be a student who studied abroad during the previous year but had been a student at AHS before that.
On the CIF, students supply information about their leadership and community service activities, and write about their character. Each category (leadership, community service, and character) is evaluated on the following basis: 4: outstanding; 3: very good; 2: average; 1: poor; 0: section not completed. The CIFs are read by the members of the NHS Board, who are five teachers within the high school selected by the principal.
See "Pillars of NHS" for information on leadership, service and character requirements and examples.
Examples:
being a positive role model in the classroom
being in a lead position in music, band, chorus, dance, drama
being a captain of a sport or an organizer of a team for a charitable event
being a peer role model
The National Honor Society Board has established guidelines for the number of hours of community service suggested for candidates.
If a student is a candidate as a junior, the Board suggests that prior to submitting the Candidate Information Form the student will have completed 60 hours or more of documented community service to receive an evaluation of 4, 50 hours or more for a 3, 40 hours or more for a 2, and over 10 hours a 1.
For seniors, it is recommended that prior to submitting the Candidate Information Form they have completed 80 hours or more to achieve a 4; 3: 65 hours or more; 2: 50 hours; 1: between 25 and 49 hours.
For both levels of students, a 0 (zero) indicates that fewer than the recommended number of hours or no hours of service have been completed or that the hours were completed before ninth grade.
NOTE: Students who have transferred to AHS will be expected to have completed a pro-rated number of hours based on the length of their enrollment at AHS. In general, 30 hours per year are expected, so for example, a student who enrolled at AHS as a sophomore would be expected to have 30 hours by the beginning of junior year.
Students will also be asked to include two letters of reference concerning their character.
At least one of these letters must come from a high school teacher.
In addition, the student will need to write a character statement about him/herself telling of his/her strengths, unique qualities and why he or she is a good candidate for NHS.