Tiered professional memberships — figuring out which tier actually counted

My professional association has multiple membership tiers (a basic dues-paying tier open to essentially anyone, and a more selective fellow/senior tier requiring demonstrated achievement and peer nomination), and understanding this distinction mattered a lot for whether my membership actually supported the criterion. The basic tier, unsurprisingly, didn't do much evidentiary work — open membership for anyone paying dues is exactly the kind of membership the regulation's outstanding-achievement requirement is meant to exclude. The higher, achievement-based tier was a different story: it required nomination, peer evaluation against real achievement criteria, and had genuine selectivity I could document. The lesson I'd pass on: if your professional association has multiple membership levels, be precise about which one you actually hold and whether it's the achievement-gated tier or the general one — conflating them, even unintentionally, is exactly the kind of imprecision that can undermine an otherwise legitimate piece of evidence.