[MisterBastahrd]

Well, sure. I was a quiz bowl captain, president of the national honor society, and placed yearly at the state science fair and I didn't list those on a professional resume either.

It takes very little effort to be an Eagle Scout. I completed all requirements including the community project aside from the board review before I turned 13.

Our scoutmaster suddenly quit on us to attain his MS in engineering (his employer surprised him by funding his education) right after I attained the final required merit badge and none of the adults wanted to take over, so it would have required me to go to another troop in the area: one was full of bullies, and one with a gigantic asshole of a scoutmaster. I decided to go fishing instead.

[ilamont]

> It takes very little effort to be an Eagle Scout. I completed all requirements including the community project aside from the board review before I turned 13.

It really varies from troop to troop. Ours is old-school, by the book, multiple leadership positions required for half-year terms. No one got an Eagle who was under 15 and the projects are very involved with construction or logistics. Tearing down and rebuilding a long wooden fence at a women's shelter, constructing display cabinets at a nature center, working with a local charity to collect hundreds of food boxes. Someone built a real footbridge over a stream, which not only required decent carpentry skills but also driving rebar through 8x8 posts into the stony bank with sledgehammers. I got poison ivy twice while clearing brush to make a nature trail and rebuild a garden at a local temple.

These projects are often the first time many youths have ever picked up a power tool or project managed anything.

The bureaucracy associated with the service project and application was stunning.

[omegaham]

This was also our troop. You couldn't make Life Scout before you were 15 thanks to the leadership requirements, and that meant that the earliest you could get Eagle was sometime at age 16. The vast majority of them got it just before they turned 18. The projects were intended to be ambitious and demanded that the Scout do the bulk of the planning and dealing with the bureaucracy.

Imagine my surprise when our troop went to SeaBase and ran into a bunch of other troops where everyone got Eagle at age 14.

[ilamont]

That's the way it is for our troop. Most of the kids aren't able to get Eagle before they are HS juniors and are 16 or 17. A few just made it in before turning 18.

The bureaucracy is a mistake. I know why Scouting does it - BSA organizational culture, abuses in the past, trying to apply standards across local troops - but a lot of it falls on troop volunteers to and parents to nag scouts to death and fix the inevitable problems that crop up. It's not right.

[wespiser_2018]

that's me and my friend: we both made eagle scout at 17, and the ceremony for me was after I turned 18.

My first troop was very by the book, and the last eagle scout in the troop was the scoutmasters son, maybe 5 years before I joined. That troop disbanded, and I finished my award at another troop were it was a bit easier, but still a lot of work.

For me, earning Eagle scout required me to stay active in scouting through age 17, and do one (or maybe 2) extra weeks at summer camp to earn enough merit badges. Once I was older (16/17) and in my second troop, I already had the leadership requirements, so I just went to meetings and help out with the kids that were much younger than me while I planned my project.

[jghn]

I am an Eagle Scout. I would never put it on my resume, and I roll my eyes when I see a resume with it on there. Ignoring the always present "it was harder back then" (fwiw, in my day average ages started to plunge from 15/16/17 to 13/14/15), my point still stands.

I can see it being okay as a first job out of college or similar. I got my Eagle at 17, and I could imagine someone with no real work experience thinking that's something to help pad the books. But once one hits 30, 40, 50, beyond there's no reason having done an Eagle project should be cited as a major accomplishment in their life. At least not from the perspective of seeking employment. I'm 100% in favor of people feeling proud about what they did, the whole point of that project was to have done right by people.

[MisterBastahrd]

Probably. I think I lucked out because my service project was clearing and installing seating and paths in a new, small park from land donated by a family who inherited it and didn't want to deal with the taxes because there were technically about 30 owners.

[freedomben]

Likewise. I was 15 when I finished and it was a monumental amount of work. The troop you're in matters a great deal.

[dctoedt]

> It takes very little effort to be an Eagle Scout.

The actual requirements aren't that demanding for reasonably-intelligent kids. As in so many areas of life, one's work ethic and persistence matter a lot because of the time-in-grade and position-of-responsibility requirements for each of the upper ranks, namely Star, Life, and Eagle, and those requirements must be completed for each rank in series, not in parallel.

> I completed all requirements including the community project aside from the board review before I turned 13.

I was an assistant Scoutmaster, and then the troop committee chair, in my son's troop, which we think is the largest in the U.S. (some 250 boys and around 50 registered adult leaders during my time). The troop is known as an "Eagle factory," but the Scouts have to put in the work. Hardly any of them make it to Eagle before about age 15 or 16 because they also do sports and other activities and eventually get distracted by the scent of gasoline and perfume (as the saying used to be in the days of all-male Scouting). Not a few Eagle Scouts, including my own son, complete their final requirement, a Scoutmaster conference, with just a couple of hours to go before they age out at 12:00:00 a.m. at the start of their 18th birthdays.

https://www.boyscouttrail.com/boy-scouts/eagle-scouts.asp

[acrobatsunfish]

Life for life?

[arnmac]

This made me laugh. Many a scout has been 1 merit badge away.