Who is the Golden Key?

It’s that time of year again.

You may have been thrilled to open your inbox and receive and invitation to apply to the “Golden Key International Honour Society”.

You may be thinking to yourself, “Sweet, all my hard work has finally paid off. Yes mom and dad, someone actually recognizes my achievements. ”

But you may want to think again.

First and foremost, I need to clarify the distinction between the Garnet Key Society and the Golden Key Society. Too many students confuse these two.

The Garnet Key Society exists only at Concordia University. It is recognized as Concordia’s official honours society, and has been since the days of Principal Henry F. Hall (Yes, the Hall building is named after him)

• Each year, the Garnet Key Society has just 12 members.
• (The invitation to apply is sent out during the winter, to students with GPAs in the high 3’s…)
• Here is the link to the official Garnet Key page if you want to learn more.

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But now let’s get back to the Golden Key, our issue at hand. 

The main questions to address are; who are they and is it worth joining?

The answer to the first question should answer the second question. That is, it is a scam business. 

As a redditor once noted, the e-mail you received is essentially saying: “Hey, you’re smart enough to do well in school, but are you dumb enough to join this society?”

The Golden Key charges $90 USD to join. According to their site, they have roughly 2 million members. I’ll do you a favor and calculate that for you. $180 million in revenue

Jesus Christ.

I should really just start my own “Honour’s Society”

The Golden Key cannot just invite all students to join, because that would take away from its “prestige”. So the Golden Key targets the top 15% of students. It’s a number which sounds nice, and also, at the same time, targets many, many students.

I’ll illustrate this for you. 

Let’s take a look at the Concordia student population. According to the latest figures on Wikipedia and Concordia’s website, there are about 36,000 undergraduate students enrolled.

15% of 36,000 is 5,400.

Yes, about five thousand and four hundred other students just like you received the same exact e-mail in their inbox. Do you still feel so special?

I really wonder how much money they make off of our university?

But in defense of the Golden Key, I do need to mention some of the good work which they do. They do award scholarships each year. They claim to give $1 million per year.

• How much does Concordia receive from that?
  • Just a few hundred dollars (based on last year’s figures)

Concordia’s Golden Key chapter does hold a few networking events during the year, and there is also an annual all-paid-for weekend retreat (in the USA) available for Golden Key members (usually just the executives of the chapters). So there definitely can be some perks by being a member.

At the end of the day, being invited to “apply” for the Golden Key is the entire honour itself. There is no greater honour by paying the $90. So if you really would like to boast about this e-mail, simply add to your CV, “Golden Key Invitee”. In fact, if I were reviewing your CV, I would be more impressed to see that you did not fall for the scam.

At the end of the day, it’s your money so do what you feel most comfortable with.

Additional Reading:

• Interesting article about Golden Key in Simon Fraser University
• UBC student blog post on the same topic
• Golden Key Wikipedia page