Sorority rush - please make it sound appealing to me

[Anonymous]

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?

yes, at every round.

[Anonymous]

Isn’t Greek life mostly a southern thing? The whole thing smacks of backwater.

[Anonymous]

I rushed and joined a sorority at a non-southern school in the mid-90s. It was technically a fraternity for women, bc when founded in the early 1900s our founders didnt want to be lumped in w the sororities of women who were just there to be “sister groups” to the mens fraternities.

Sororities/fraternities do a lot more than just party. I was on the executive committee of mine (like pres, vp, etc.) so obv very involved but I went to maybe 2 frat parties my entire college career. I wasnt into frat guys so I saw no reason to go. That was ok because I joined a sorority that liked me as a person, not just one that only consists of hot chicks picking other hot chicks. There were plenty of other things to do w my sisters other than frat parties. Granted, I wasn't in one of the “top” sororities on campus. Maybe if I was, it would have been different.

The rush process was a bit stressful, but it lasts maybe a week -10 days. Its basically a week during which every woman who wants to join a sorority meets all of the sororities at the school one after another, like speed dating. and learns about them: their values, their activities, their philanthropy, basically the vibe of the place. Every sorority has a diff vibe. Some are perfect for the “hot chicks”, some for the fun girls, smart girls, nice girls, athletic girls, etc. You choose which house fits where you can see yourself fitting in best over the next 4 years. Then, they do the same. And hopefully you match, or receive a bid. At my school, there was one sorority that had some very nice women in it, not conventionally attractive. Many were overweight. They gave every single woman a bid. And they were a v tight sisterhood. Everybody wants to belong somewhere.

What I loved about being in a sorority was having a built-in support system. Even now that I am in my 40s, we just made a move and I dont know anyone. There is a local chapter of my sorority though so I was able to reach out join it and meet a few people.

[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?

yes, at every round.

And thats fine. Because you want to join a sorority with a group of women who share your values. If you dont receive a bid from a specific sorority, its bc they dont think that you share their values. And the matching process should be a two-way street.

Lets say you are a studious woman and you take school seriously. Joining the sorority that is women who only want to party doesnt align with your values. Or if you are a student athelete, the partiers probably wont align w your vales either.

[Anonymous]

I never rushed or was interested in being in a sorority, but my question is: Why does anything need to “sound good to you”? Why would anyone trouble themselves to “make it sound good to you”?

Fishing and golf don’t sound good to me, but I don’t all of life to run according to my personal preferences, and I don’t think anyone needs to make things “sound good to me”.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I never rushed or was interested in being in a sorority, but my question is: Why does anything need to “sound good to you”? Why would anyone trouble themselves to “make it sound good to you”?

Fishing and golf don’t sound good to me, but I don’t all of life to run according to my personal preferences, and I don’t think anyone needs to make things “sound good to me”.

I dont understand what you are trying to say here…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I went to a different college and this isnt what dirty rush meant at my school either. At the school that I attended, dirty rush was when sororities wouldnt follow the rules panhellinic set out for fairness during rush. For instance sorority members werent supposed to socialize w rushees outside of the rush process during rush, so that the whole process was fair to everyone—everyone pledging got a chance to meet every sorority in the same way everyone else did under the same time constraints of one hour/party/day. At my school AOPi was the sorority with the prettiest girls and they would often dirty rush other hot chicks. Make sure the hot chicks met everyone outside of formal rush process, etc.

[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.

Hmmm. Your strong reaction to it suggests projection, past rejection and lingering feelings of inadequacy.

[Anonymous]

Rush is a series of get togethers where all potential new members get to meet all sororities on campus and get to know the women.

Lets say you are at a school w 10 sororities. The first day of rush week, all women rushing go to a series of 10 get togethers/parties. They are each like an hour or so long and the sorority lets you know about them and you let them know about you. Its usually an informal event since its a huge group of like 100 people trudging from party to party. So your fit is casual (what casual means depends on the school, as Bama has taught us). Then that night you reflect on who you met and which houses you want to learn more about and you rank them 1-10. The sororities also discuss the women they met and who they want to get to know better and they decide who to give bids to come back the next day.

The second night you will go to maybe 8 houses. The parties will be a little bit longer, there will be maybe 50-75 women w you this time vs 100. Itll be a diff attire that night as well, rush week usually gets progressively more formal. Anyway, that night the rushees again reflect on the houses they met and where they think they would best fit. Houses do the same. Then the rushees again rank their preferences 1-8 and the sororities again do the same.

Next night, more parties, maybe 5 houses. Every night you are narrowing down where you best fit and vice versa. Then maybe 3 the next night. You get my drift.

At the end of it all, sororities choose who to give a bid to and women choose to accept or not. It can be painful for rushees who really wanted a certain house but didnt get it. Like if DZ is the top house on campus a lot of women will be heartbroken not to get picked by DZ.

[Anonymous]

I actually liked rushing when I went through it bc I enjoyed meeting everyone and didn't find the process that stressful. This was 20 years ago at a southern school. But when I went through it from within the sorority I was pretty shocked by how they talked about the rushees and then voted on them.

Having said that, some of my best friends to this day are people I met in the sorority. Would I have met them without it? Maybe, maybe not. but it helped me secure lifelong friendships so I'm definitely glad I did it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I never rushed or was interested in being in a sorority, but my question is: Why does anything need to “sound good to you”? Why would anyone trouble themselves to “make it sound good to you”?

Fishing and golf don’t sound good to me, but I don’t all of life to run according to my personal preferences, and I don’t think anyone needs to make things “sound good to me”.

I dont understand what you are trying to say here…

It’s very clear. Try slowing down and reading again.

[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’m the pp and my kid did rush at Uva and it was stressful. She and 3-4 of her friends were crushed early on but then it worked out, her best friend got dropped on the last day from her moms house (uva legacy). So yeah tough, but then it’s over and it all worked out. I rushed at at Slac and it was fine, but I had friends in the house I wanted and it wasn’t nearly as competitive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

If your daughter is socially awkward, traditional Greek life prob isnt for her. However, not all Greek orgs are like what you see in the movies. She could find her tribe in an academic or service sorority/fraternity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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’m the pp and my kid did rush at Uva and it was stressful. She and 3-4 of her friends were crushed early on but then it worked out, her best friend got dropped on the last day from her moms house (uva legacy). So yeah tough, but then it’s over and it all worked out. I rushed at at Slac and it was fine, but I had friends in the house I wanted and it wasn’t nearly as competitive.

Would the roommate have been a good fit in moms sorority though honestly, looking back at it? Being a legacy is awesome but if you are (for instance) a vegan and moms sorority thinks vegans are dumb, that would be a long and unfun 4 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Isn’t Greek life mostly a southern thing? The whole thing smacks of backwater.

No. You sound uncultured and ignorant.