[7] The Phi Beta Kappa Society had its first meeting on December 5, 1776, at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia by five students, with John Heath as its first President.

[8] The group consisted of students who frequented the Raleigh Tavern as a common meeting area off the college campus.

A persistent story maintains that a Masonic lodge also met at this tavern, but the Freemasons gathered at a different building in Williamsburg.

The earliest records indicate only that the students met to debate and engage in oratory, and on topics that would have been not far removed from the curriculum.

[10]: 83–85 [11] In the Phi Beta Kappa Initiation of 1779, the new member was informed, Older fraternal societies existed at College of William & Mary.

[13] John Heath, chief organizer of the Phi Beta Kappa, according to tradition earlier sought but was refused admission to the P.D.A., though he may instead have disdained to join it (much later, his friend and fellow student William Short wrote that the P.D.A.

"[10]: 84  The founders of Phi Beta Kappa declared that the society was formed for congeniality and to promote good fellowship, with "friendship as its basis and benevolence and literature as its pillars.

"[10] Before the British attempt at reclamation of the sovereign American colonies, including Virginia, there was a temporary closure of the College of William & Mary and disbandment of Phi Beta Kappa in early 1781.

The new society was given the motto, Φιλοσοφία Βίου Κυβερνήτη or in Latin letters Philosophia Biou Kybernētēs, which loosely translated to English means "Love of learning is the guide of life".

[10] In 1996, Emily Bernstein of The New York Times reported declining rates of Phi Beta Kappa membership acceptances at the University of Connecticut due to a decrease in social prestige.

[15] Earlier, in 1970, Robert Reinhold similarly reported for The New York Times that recipient students at the University of California at Berkeley expressed a mix of distaste and shame about the degree.

The first insignia was a larger, cut-and-engraved silver medallion, essentially a square of metal with a loop cut integrally with the body of the square from the same sheet of silver, to allow for suspension from one or two ribbons worn around the member's neck in the manner in which the older fraternities (and the Masonic bodies on which the collegiate societies were in part patterned) wore their insignia.

Though several stylistic details have survived since the earliest days—the use of the stars, pointing hand, and Greek letters on the obverse, for example—notable differences exist between older keys and current examples.

[10] The Phi Beta Kappa Society publishes The Key Reporter,[22] a newsletter distributed quarterly to all contributing members and biannually to all other members, and The American Scholar, a quarterly subscription-based journal that accepts essays on literature, history, science, public affairs, and culture.

The Symposium program consists of a pair of lectures to be delivered at an annual APA division meeting and a Phi Beta Kappa event.

Established in 2001 by Professor Walter J. Jensen (ΦΒΚ, UCLA), the fellowship is awarded for at least six continuous months of study in France and carries a stipend originally set in 1995 at $10,000, to be adjusted for inflation.

[29] The Romanell-Phi Beta Kappa Professorship is awarded annually to scholars in the field of philosophy, without restriction to any one school of philosophical thought.

The purpose of the program is to contribute to the intellectual life of the campus by making possible an exchange of ideas between the Visiting Scholars and the resident faculty and students.

[32] Phi Beta Kappa has chapters in only about 10% of American higher learning institutions, and only about 10% of these schools' Arts and Sciences graduates are invited to join.

[39][40] Each chapter sets its academic standards, but all inductees must have studied the liberal arts and sciences, demonstrated "good moral character", and, usually, earned grades placing them in the top tenth of their class.

[41] However, at least one school, Princeton University, includes Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BSE) students in Phi Beta Kappa.

[41] Membership in Phi Beta Kappa is typically limited to students with very high grade point averages (GPAs), at least 3.8 out of a 4.0 scale.