pretty sure this was ripped primarily from Harry Potter.
Just like 99% of young adult fiction.
Because it's a genre for children and retards.
With Harry Potter, it's a sorting hat with different houses of a school and not members of society.
the houses of the school in harry potter serve the same function as the "societies" in this shitty series
they function as an equivalent to the perceived "cliques" kids like to group their peers into.
Just like the protagonists never fit into any one of these cliques, every child sees himself as a special snowflake who has the best of everything and the none of the bad.
seriously this shit was written for fucking children