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New Members Survey 2012, Results and  Conclusions
This summer’s BGS office interns, Anqi Fang, Jillian Cox and Truc Trinh, reached out to current members through unique focus groups, one each for juniors, seniors and grad students, to find out what Beta Gamma Sigma’s recently inducted members most want to see from the Society as well as how BGS and its chapters can better reach out to potential members and discuss the honor of being accepted as a lifetime member.
With a total survey group of 2,647 recently inducted BGS members (761 juniors, 593 seniors and 1,293 graduate students), the interns found some interesting trends from the survey results. Here is a sample of some of the findings.
This is all very useful information, and we encourage you to use it to your chapter's advantage going forth.
| Awareness of the Society |
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In the past three years, students’ awareness of the Society has steadily increased. However, a significant 68% of all focus group participants said they were not aware of the Society before they were invited to join. |
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Survey results from this year show that the trend “the bigger the school, the less known BGS is known" remains. However, when comparing last year’s results to this year’s, it can be seen that awareness of BGS in schools of 15,000 or more has increased. |
| The Value of Membership |
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The majority of students do not understand the value of BGS membership at the point of invitation. |
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They receive so many invitations for honor societies that it is hard for them to see the differences between each one. Emphasizing professionalism, exclusivity, and formality during the invitation process is a good way for BGS to differentiate itself from other honorary organizations. |
| Reasons for Accepting Membership |
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The top three reasons for accepting membership which were selected by juniors and seniors are “the honor and prestige,” “the recognition for my hard work,” “to put on my resume.” |
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Invitation Process |
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Most members were invited to join through traditional mail and email. |
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Tapping ceremonies clearly positively influence students’ decision to join and address many concerns of students including: making the invitation process more formal to better represent the honor of BGS, making the invitation process more public, and receiving more encouragement from faculty. |
| Benefits of Membership |
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Students are most likely to identify themselves as BGS members on resumes and interviews as well as take advantage of the various discount offers. |
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Like previous years, product discounts and test prep discounts were the most popular discount offers. |
| Graduate Education |
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The majority of BGS members plan to pursue a graduate degree, mainly an MBA. However, there are students interested in other degrees. |
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There was a striking difference between when students plan to obtain these degrees. More than one-third of juniors[8] said they would pursue their graduate degree immediately following their undergraduate education. On the other hand, only 27% of seniors said they would pursue theirs immediately following their undergraduate education.
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Beta Gamma Sigma, Inc. © 2012