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Article: Fie Beta Kappa: the honor society gets rejection letters. (15% of students invited to join Phi Beta Kappa reject the invitation)(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- Newsweek
- Article date:
- May 20, 1996
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TWICE A YEAR, THE 248 CHAPTERS OF Phi Beta Kappa scrutinize the nation's brightest undergraduates to decide which will be invited to join the "Society." George Bush (Yale, '47) and Bill Clinton (Georgetown, '68) are two of the six U.S. presidents who earned the golden key of the nation's most prestigious academic honors organization; only the top 10 percent of the junior and senior classes are eligible. But when the Society polled its chapters this year, it discovered a surprising phenomenon. Fifteen percent of the students invited to join in 1995 turned down the honor. "We were stunned," says Douglas Foard, executive secretary of Phi Beta Kappa. "For most people, it was ...