Sorority rush - please make it sound appealing to me

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The whole thing is a laughingstock to the rest of the world who care to know of its existence. Which would be funny if the participants weren't so convinced of their own superiority, which ultimately makes the whole thing a bit sad. "We're laughing at you, not with you," as it were. I would personally avoid.

Says a woman who wasn't picked and who has a homely and/or socially awkward daughter.

Mean girl behavior still exists in adults, I see. You aren't exactly selling the sorority concept. But I'm probably too homely and/or socially awkward for you.

I take that it's a "yes?"

I don't know what the question was, but sure, I'll accept that you're prettier (or at least put more effort into your appearance). We clearly have different values -- again, you and your values aren't selling the sorority concept.

You're the one with the chip on your shoulder.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD rushed last year and I was in a sorority.

I preface this all by saying, neither of us rushed in the South. That's a whole different ballgame that I know nothing about.

It also varies by school but for DD (VA Tech) They suggest what type of outfit to wear for each day of rush. It gets more formal the further you get into rush. After each round you list you get to drop a certain # and the sororities drop a certain #. It goes on like this each round until you get down to 2. You rank them 1 and 2 and the sororities do the same. Yes, you may not get your top choice. You may not even get your second choice but I think that's pretty rare. If you don't like the bid you end with you don't have to take it.

NP

And are there people that don't get any bids?

It depends on the school but that would be rare. Many schools guarantee a bid if you go through the whole process.

And by “guarantee” they mean you may get one bid that you weren’t interested in at all. Washes their hands of it but your daughter is rejected by any house she had listed as preferences.

[Anonymous]

At UMD, some sororities also participated in “dirty rush” by telling PNMs to suicide their house (only rank that one house), knowing that they girls weren’t high enough to get a bid. Then they would contact them under the guise of COB (continuous open bidding) and snap them up. It was a way to ensure they got all of the girls they wanted. Unfortunately, some girls always went that route and then didn’t get the bid later on, and they were usually the ones who invested so much into that one particular house that there wasn’t another house interested.

[Anonymous]

^Sorry, that isn’t appealing, but it’s honest.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Rush is startlingly similar to the law firm on campus interview (OCI) process.

No, it isn't. Those girls wouldn't get bids.

Well, I did both and it really is a very similar process. But feel free to not believe me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD rushed last year and I was in a sorority.

I preface this all by saying, neither of us rushed in the South. That's a whole different ballgame that I know nothing about.

It also varies by school but for DD (VA Tech) They suggest what type of outfit to wear for each day of rush. It gets more formal the further you get into rush. After each round you list you get to drop a certain # and the sororities drop a certain #. It goes on like this each round until you get down to 2. You rank them 1 and 2 and the sororities do the same. Yes, you may not get your top choice. You may not even get your second choice but I think that's pretty rare. If you don't like the bid you end with you don't have to take it.

Rush is a stressful process because what ends up happening is that all the girls tend to be most attracted to the "top" houses, which are the sororities that mix with the "top" fraternities. The problem with your average college freshman is that in those houses, you need to have connections, usually people from your high school (usually private) who get you in. Even if you go in thinking you don't care and you don't even know if you want to pledge anywhere, you often will "fall in love" with a house because you liked the girls you spoke to or all your friends are hoping to go there too, and unfortunately they may not fall in love with you. My DD is happy where she ended up but it was hell to go through for sure. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, she was dropped by all the houses she thought she loved after the first day, save one. When she called me in tears, I reminded her that she had called me after she met with this one house and asked me if Id ever heard of it before because she really loved the girls but just knew nothing about them. Since that was the only one she liked left, she really only focused on that one house to tell me how much she liked the girls. She just had never heard of them before so didn't know anything about them. The rest of rush ended up fine as that house is where she got a bid. It was heartbreaking for her and several of her friends to be cut from places they thought they had a good connection with but, if you asked all of them now, they ended up in the right house for them, and it really does usually work out that way. Today my DD would say she is so thankful that she didn't end up in the ones she thought were her first choice going in.

You do not need to accept a bid, and you can drop out of rush at any time. Even if you accept a bid, you can check it out and then drop if you don't like it.

Wow. I had two girls rush at UVA and it was not "stressful" for them at all. Not even a little.

I also had two girls rush at UVA and it was indeed stressful.
DP

[Anonymous]

My daughter will be a freshman in a couple of weeks and isn't sure if she's interested in going greek or not. I was never in a sorority (my college didn't have them), so I can't really advise either way. I told her to make friends freshman year and see what those friends are planning to do. She can decide to rush or not for sophomore year. It does sound like a huge time suck and pretty silly. OTOH, it could be a lot of fun.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Rush is startlingly similar to the law firm on campus interview (OCI) process.

No, it isn't. Those girls wouldn't get bids.

Yes, it is. PP is correct.

Source -- been on both sides with sorority rush and law firm recruitment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The whole thing is a laughingstock to the rest of the world who care to know of its existence. Which would be funny if the participants weren't so convinced of their own superiority, which ultimately makes the whole thing a bit sad. "We're laughing at you, not with you," as it were. I would personally avoid.

This. And people on DCUM trip over themselves to defend it, because being in an idiotic sorority was the highlight of their sad little lives and they still cling to it 20-30 years later.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At UMD, some sororities also participated in “dirty rush” by telling PNMs to suicide their house (only rank that one house), knowing that they girls weren’t high enough to get a bid. Then they would contact them under the guise of COB (continuous open bidding) and snap them up. It was a way to ensure they got all of the girls they wanted. Unfortunately, some girls always went that route and then didn’t get the bid later on, and they were usually the ones who invested so much into that one particular house that there wasn’t another house interested.

I am so confused by this (and I was in a sorority in college!). I get the gist is that this is against the spirit of the rules and hurts the girls rushing, but I cannot follow this.

OP, where is your dd going to college? The process can be very different if you are talking Colgate vs UGA, for examples.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD rushed last year and I was in a sorority.

I preface this all by saying, neither of us rushed in the South. That's a whole different ballgame that I know nothing about.

It also varies by school but for DD (VA Tech) They suggest what type of outfit to wear for each day of rush. It gets more formal the further you get into rush. After each round you list you get to drop a certain # and the sororities drop a certain #. It goes on like this each round until you get down to 2. You rank them 1 and 2 and the sororities do the same. Yes, you may not get your top choice. You may not even get your second choice but I think that's pretty rare. If you don't like the bid you end with you don't have to take it.

NP

And are there people that don't get any bids?

It depends on the school but that would be rare. Many schools guarantee a bid if you go through the whole process.

This isn’t the case at many of the SEC schools. They don’t publish the numbers of the people without kids or the people who drop out of rush in many places. My freshman roommate rushed and got dropped by her mom’s sorority before the final round. She hadn’t received any other matches. I got a front row seat to the drama since she had multiple recommendations from the sorority’s alumna and they weren’t happy their protege got dropped etc.

[Anonymous]

I would love it if someone could explain the appeal. I just finished Alexandra Robbins' book Pledged and could not find one redeeming feature, not even the ones she claimed. It seemed like a ridiculous bunch of shallow women keeping the middle school cafeteria going their whole lives because they had so little else to recommend them that they had to turn this rubbish into life-or-death. To say nothing of the rampant racism, debauchery, drunkenness, and promiscuity, while hypocritically claiming the exact opposite. I started the book hoping to get stereotypes dispelled and instead found them confirmed. Every sorority booster in the book seemed to have Stockholm syndrome. I felt like I was reading about alien life forms in a YA dystopian novel, it was so unrelatable.

The historically white national sororities, anyway. The independents and the minority ones sounded much more tolerable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The whole thing is a laughingstock to the rest of the world who care to know of its existence. Which would be funny if the participants weren't so convinced of their own superiority, which ultimately makes the whole thing a bit sad. "We're laughing at you, not with you," as it were. I would personally avoid.

This. And people on DCUM trip over themselves to defend it, because being in an idiotic sorority was the highlight of their sad little lives and they still cling to it 20-30 years later.

+1. It's honestly a bit embarrassing. Especially when trying to explain to a non-American that your peak in life was when you became a little a Gamma Lamma Bamma or whatever tf they say.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At UMD, some sororities also participated in “dirty rush” by telling PNMs to suicide their house (only rank that one house), knowing that they girls weren’t high enough to get a bid. Then they would contact them under the guise of COB (continuous open bidding) and snap them up. It was a way to ensure they got all of the girls they wanted. Unfortunately, some girls always went that route and then didn’t get the bid later on, and they were usually the ones who invested so much into that one particular house that there wasn’t another house interested.

NP and I don’t know what any of this means.

[Anonymous]

This sounds wretched, and very much like a return to middle school. Thankfully I went to an urban college and have no idea if there were sororities - if there were, I didn’t know anyone who participated. I have a DD who is indeed socially awkward so I hope she doesn’t engage in any of this.