A Phi Beta Kappa Society is an academic honor society with the mission of "fostering and recognizing excellence" in undergrad liberal arts & sciences. Based around 1776, these are a oldest such society in the United States. Membership is granted to more or less 1% of college graduates, & in todays world there are 270 chapters & all over half the million residing members.

Phi Beta Kappa (ΦΒΚ) stands for even Φιλοσοφια Βιου Κυβερνετης or philosophia biou kubernetes -- "love of wisdom, the guide of life."

History
ΦΒΚ, a number one Greek-letter fraternity in a United States, began as a secret literary and philosophic society at the College of William and Mary in 1776. A 2nd chapter was established at Harvard University on December 4, 1779, & a third at Yale University on December 8 of the same month. Subsequent chapters were established at Dartmouth College in 1787, Union College in 1817, Bowdoin College in 1825, and Brown University in 1830. Secrecy was jettisoned within 1831 when you took the period of hard anti-Masonic sentiment.

By 1883, whenever a United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa were established, there were Xxv chapters. A number one women were elected to a society at the University of Vermont in 1875, and a number 1 African-Western member was elected at a equivalent institution deuce years late.

For each one chapter is intended by its state & a Greek letter indicating the choose where that state's chapters were founded. E.g., Alpha of Pennsylvania refers to the chapter at Dickinson College (1887); Beta of Pennsylvania at Lehigh University (1887); Gamma of Pennsylvania at Lafayette College (1890); and Delta of Pennsylvania at a University of Pennsylvania (1892).

Inside 1988, a United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa officially changed its title to The Phi Beta Kappa Society.

The Key

the symbol of a Phi Beta Kappa Society occurs as gold key graven by using the image of a pointing finger & iii stars. These represent a ambition of a immature scholars & the deuce-ace identifying information of the Society: friendly relationship, morality, & learning. On a back of the key come the initials "SP," which could have for the Latin words "societas philosophiae."

Ignorance of Phi Beta Kappa

The Will 26, 1996 article in the New York Times [http://mbhs.bergtraum.k12.ny.us/cybereng/nyt/phi-beta.htm *] entitled "Phi Beta Kappa Being Turned Down by Many Honorees" noted that a bit of students were turning down membership in the Society because it experienced never heard of it or even got already been inundated by using membership offers from either imitators prefer Golden Key. Most of the Xxvii chapters that reported acceptance rates under 90% were at big state universities.

At personal universities & little liberal arts colleges, however, election to Phi Beta Kappa remains one of a greatest honors a student could receive, & the couple of membership offers extended come well-nigh always accepted. Amherst College Professor Gerald Mager said that he could not remember the previous instance a student turned down an offer to join Phi Beta Kappa, & noted that "every time we have an election, the student newspaper runs a story." Based on data from a Days article, a huge majority of chapters report acceptance rates run over 90%.

Famous Members

Elected as Undergraduates

Bushrod Washington -- William & Mary, 1778 John Marshall -- William & Mary, 1780 James Kent -- Yale, 1781 John Quincy Adams -- Harvard, 1787 Eli Whitney -- Yale, 1792 Joseph Story -- Harvard, 1798 Daniel Webster -- Dartmouth, 1801 John Calhoun -- Yale, 1804 Samuel Morse -- Yale, 1810 Rufus Choate -- Dartmouth, 1819 Nathaniel Hawthorne -- Bowdoin, 1824 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow -- Bowdoin, 1825 Chester Arthur -- Union, 1848 Oliver Wendell Holmes -- Harvard, 1861 Robert E. Peary -- Bowdoin, 1877 William Howard Taft -- Yale, 1878 John Dewey -- Vermont, 1879 Theodore Roosevelt -- Harvard, 1880 Charles Evans Hughes -- Brown, 1881 George Santayana -- Harvard, 1886 Bernard Baruch -- CUNY, 1889 W. E. B. Du Bois -- Fisk, 1890 Bainbridge Colby -- Williams, 1890 Learned Hand -- Harvard, 1893 Alexander Meiklejohn -- Brown, 1893 Harlan Fiske Stone -- Amherst, 1894 Owen Roberts -- Pennsylvania, 1895 Felix Frankfurter -- CUNY, 1902 Elihu Root -- Hamilton, 1903 John Foster Dulles -- Princeton, 1908 Owen Brewster -- Bowdoin, 1909 Harold Hitz Burton -- Bowdoin, 1909 Walter Lippmann -- Harvard, 1909 Paul Douglas -- Bowdoin, 1913 Pearl Buck -- Randoph-Macon, 1914 James Conant -- Harvard, 1914 Dean Acheson -- Yale, 1915 Archibald MacLeish -- Yale, 1915 Charles Hamilton Houston -- Amherst, 1915 Alfred Kinsey -- Bowdoin, 1916 Paul Robeson -- Rutgers, 1919 William O. Douglas -- Whitman, 1920 Herbert Brownell, Jr. -- Nebraska, 1924 Alger Hiss -- Johns Hopkins, 1926 Harry Blackmun -- Harvard, 1929 James Michener -- Swarthmore, 1929 Lewis Franklin Powell, Jr. -- Washington & Lee, 1929 Nelson Rockefeller -- Dartmouth, 1930 Jonas Salk -- CCNY, 1930 Carl Albert -- Oklahoma, 1931 Dean Rusk -- Davidson, 1931 Daniel Boorstin -- Harvard, 1934 Richard Helms -- Williams, 1935 Ed Muskie -- Bates, 1936 Robert McNamara -- Berkeley, 1937 Potter Stewart -- Yale, 1937 Byron White -- Colorado, 1937 Caspar Weinberger -- Harvard, 1938 Ella Grasso -- Mt. Holyoke, 1940 John Paul Stevens -- Chicago, 1941 Betty Friedan -- Smith, 1942 Phyllis Schlafly -- Washington U., 1943 Frank Church -- Stanford, 1947 Robert Bork -- Chicago, 1948 George H.W. Bush -- Yale, 1948 William Rehnquist -- Stanford, 1948 Brock Adams -- Washington, 1949 Edward O. Wilson -- Alabama, 1949 Henry Kissinger -- Harvard, 1950 Pat Robertson -- Washington & Lee, 1950 Susan Sontag -- Chicago, 1951 Arlen Specter -- Pennsylvania, 1951 Stephen Sondheim -- Williams, 1952 John Shelby Spong -- North Carolina, 1952 Thomas Pickering -- Bowdoin, 1953 Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- Cornell, 1954 Dick Lugar -- Denison, 1954 Victor Navasky -- Swarthmore, 1954 John Updike -- Harvard, 1954 Ralph Nader -- Princeton, 1955 Gloria Steinem -- Smith, 1956 Elizabeth Dole -- Duke, 1958 Anthony Kennedy -- Stanford, 1958 Kris Kristofferson -- Pomona, 1958 Stephen Breyer -- Stanford, 1959 Francis Ford Coppola -- Hofstra, 1959 Bob Graham -- Florida, 1959 Robert Nozick -- Columbia, 1959 Richard Posner -- Yale, 1959 Robert E. Rubin -- Harvard, 1960 Fay Vincent -- Williams, 1960 Pat Schroeder -- Minnesota, 1961 David Souter -- Harvard, 1961 Lamar Alexander -- Vanderbilt, 1962 Tom Brokaw -- South Dakota, 1962 Lynne Cheney -- Colorado C., 1962 Richard Epstein -- Columbia, 1963 David Satcher -- Morehouse, 1963 James Woolsey -- Stanford, 1963 Michael Crichton -- Harvard, 1964 Joseph Lieberman -- Yale, 1964 Angela Davis -- Brandeis, 1965 Paul Wellstone -- North Carolina, 1965 William Weld -- Harvard, 1966 Bill Clinton -- Georgetown, 1968 Laurie Anderson -- Barnard 1969 Hillary Clinton -- Wellesley, 1969 Jon Corzine -- Illinois, 1969 Frank Easterbrook -- Swarthmore, 1970 Louis Freeh -- Rutgers, 1971 Nadine Strossen -- Radcliffe, 1972 Benazir Bhutto -- Radcliffe, 1973 Jeb Bush -- Texas, 1973 E.J. Dionne -- Harvard, 1973 Condoleezza Rice -- Denver, 1974 Susan Collins -- St. Lawrence, 1975 Gale Norton -- Denver, 1975 Lawrence Lindsey -- Bowdoin, 1976 John Roberts -- Harvard, 1976 Jennifer Granholm -- Berkeley, 1980 Nicholas D. Kristof -- Harvard, 1981 Eliot Spitzer -- Princeton, 1981 George Stephanopoulos -- Columbia, 1982 Miguel Estrada -- Columbia, 1983 Dinesh D'Souza -- Dartmouth, 1983 Daniel Pearl -- Stanford, 1985 Jeff Bezos -- Princeton, 1986 Paul Clement --Georgetown, 1988

Honorary Members

Martin Van Buren Franklin Pierce Rutherford B. Hayes James A. Garfield Grover Cleveland Alexander Graham Bell Mark Twain Woodrow Wilson Calvin Coolidge Franklin D. Roosevelt Harry S. Truman Dwight D. Eisenhower Jimmy Carter Isaac Asimov Leonard Bernstein Ralph Waldo Emerson Robert Frost Hellen Keller Washington Irving Carl Sandberg William T. Sherman Booker T. Washington Henry Adams Henry James Louis Brandeis John D. Rockefeller