Looking for opinions and good anecdotes.
I was recently nominated to become a member of Tau Beta Pi, the National Engineering Honor Society, due to my standing in the top 1/8 of the junior class at my university. Since a lot of the members of this forum are engineers, I figured it would be a good place to ask questions.
I'm mainly worried about the cost and if it's really worth it. It's a $75 initiation fee but I think it's good for life after that? I'm not sure but there is an informational meeting next week. People always say it's good to put organizations on your resume but I don't see the point in just saying you're a member of this or that. If HR people really think it's good that someone was a member of a professional organization, then they need to reexamine their approach.
Without inflating myself too much, I think I'm a little above saying I'm a member of a society. Maybe it helps students who haven't done much in the way of engineering, but for me I don't think it helps much. By the end of summer 2016, I will have 4 internships (2 full time summer and 2 part time during the school year) under my belt and I will only be halfway through my degree. I can't help but think that having 3 fortune 500 aerospace companies on my resume is better than blindly noting that I'm a member of this 3 or 4 letter society.
I'm already a member of:
ASME. I think it was $25 once when I was a freshman and it's good for 4 years. I can't remember exactly though. I've gotten some free pizza out of it.
AIAA. Joined my sophomore year for $25/yr. Still not entirely sure what the point is. I've been to one meeting this year and I haven't heard of any others. They don't seem to be very active.
SME. Got a free membership with a scholarship that I won through SME. It's a new chapter on campus. I wasn't able to make the first meeting and I'm not planning on being a manufacturing engineer anyway. Free pizza is nice though.
I'm worried that I'm blindly throwing money at these organizations so that I can hear a boring lecture once a month. The campus organization that I'm most active with is free to join and we actually do things that look good on a resume. 50% of my resume is from my activities in this club which designs, builds, and flies aerospace hardware at intercollegiate competitions. I'm the treasurer and my activities building real hardware in this club are the only reasons I've been able to get the internships that I have gotten.
So what does everyone think? Should I join Tau Beta Pi or not?