Sorority Rush

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Any moms stay at hotel while daughter goes thru Rush? DD moves in and rushes the week before school starts. It is a pretty big state school in the south.

DD went thru rush at a big southern school. She felt pretty bad about herself after getting dropped from houses she really liked and getting invited back to houses she wasn't crazy about. It was so hard because she didn't have any friends yet. I got phone calls at 7 am and phone calls at 11 pm with her crying. I don't know how I cold have helped if I had been local.

[Anonymous]

I was in a large SEC sorority back in the day. It is cut throat but I would encourage you to go back home and plan to come back for bid day. The process goes almost all day for a week or whatever, so there's not much you could do there unless she drops out (or gets dropped) altogether.

My main advice is to secure recommendations for as many chapters as you can before you go. Chapters will say they will do this for you and they will, but only if your daughter really stuns the pants off them. There's just way too many girls to do it for every single girl and so this, along with grade criteria, is one of the first things that chapters will go off of when deciding who to invite back or not (panhellenic will tell them how many invites they can extend for the next round and it's almost always less than the amount of girls who want to come back to that chapter for the next round).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My sister went to a big, Southern college. Rush was the week before fall classes. She went early and moved in and my mom didn’t stay (she was in a sorority too, so got the process(.

On day 2, after getting called back from about 5 houses, she decided that she didn’t want a sorority after all. Neither did a couple of other girls on her hall.

The 3 of them spent the week together, exploring the town and getting to know each other. 20 years later they are still good friends.

Had a parent been there, she’d have missed the chance to make those friends, and probably felt more pressure from my mom to go through the rest of rush week.

Cool story, bro. Life is full of “sliding doors” scenarios.
But, of course, the alternate version of this is that Mom stays—encourages daughter to “stick it out” and she ends up pledging one of the amazing houses full of girls who were very excited to extend an invitation to her and made lifelong connections to those girls.
Maybe she also gets to be friends with the other girls on her hall...maybe she doesn’t.
I’m glad your sister is happy with how things turned out. But who knows what was behind Door #3...life is often like that.

Or, whether or not Mom stayed in town, Sis could have pledge a sorority and gone on to inflict pain on other women by playing the spiteful shallow mean girl game.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hmmm. Rush seems fairly low key at many schools and DD has made many friends through sorority. Guess it depends on the school.

Yes. But OP specifically said that her DD is attending a large southern school. And that’s a different animal entirely. Once recruitment is over, though, the actual membership experience is fairly comparable. The girls at those schools tend to make strong connections through their sorority as well. Friendships formed among young women during the college years can be so meaningful. I’m glad there are still women-only groups in most universities (ahem—I’m looking at you, Harvard!) as I think women really benefit from banding together to encourage each other and be a support system. And interestingly, the All-sorority GPA is consistently higher on most campuses than the all-women’s GPA. So it looks like there are still some benefits of you want to find them.

Meh. There are women's athletic teams and choral groups at many universities, including Harvard. Women are also free to create and join other single-gender affinity groups if they so choose.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any moms stay at hotel while daughter goes thru Rush? DD moves in and rushes the week before school starts. It is a pretty big state school in the south.

DD went thru rush at a big southern school. She felt pretty bad about herself after getting dropped from houses she really liked and getting invited back to houses she wasn't crazy about. It was so hard because she didn't have any friends yet. I got phone calls at 7 am and phone calls at 11 pm with her crying. I don't know how I cold have helped if I had been local.

This unfortunately happens and something to keep in mind for the OP is that those houses that girls really like are usually really, really good at marketing themselves and their goal is to make girls like them and want to join. They are just really, really good at rush and rush events. So if a girl likes them and wants to join, they have done their job.

Also OP there are lots of girls who have made youtube videos about the rush process at southern schools so it's worth taking a peek at them to get an idea of the process.

[Anonymous]

We live in NOVA. 80% of DDs friends spread all over US joined sororities. Gotten very popular today.

[Anonymous]

I did get quite a few calls during the process and it was exhausting. She’s learned a lot of leadership skills and still makes top grades. Sorority women are not dumb alcoholics— that’s a stereotype.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are girls posting on our community Facebook page looking for recommendation letters to pledge their down south sororities. WTH?

It’s a whole new world of sorority recruitment now. You need a recommendation letter to as many houses as possible or you’ll be dropped right away.

But how is this new?? Recommendation letters from alumnae have always been a requirement for many groups in large SEC schools. It's not new. It's just not necessarily a common practice at ALL schools. (BTW, those who criticize that there would be such a requirement would be the first to scream "how did you not KNOW that the girl was a racist a$$hole?!" if an unvetted new member of sorority turns out to be so....so a letter from an alumna who has her sorority's best interest at heart can say "Hey...this young woman is hard working, smart, and kind with a heart for service. Her resume speaks for itself but I also know the family personally and would be proud to recommend her." Since women are invited to join a sorority after only one week of parties--and by one week I mean a grand total of about and 2.5 hours mingling with its current members--these letters of recommendation can be a very helpful introduction of the woman to the sorority members. And a young woman who has a recommendation letter typically will be invited to at least one round of parties as a courtesy. When there are 3,000 women going through rush, a personal reference is key. This is not unlike having a reference from a friend you know who works at a company you want to work for. Your resume is your own, and you own what happens at the interview. But having a friend "vouch" to your boss that you're a stand-up candidate can get your foot in the door and open that opportunity so that you aren't just one more resume on the pile of 3,000.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We live in NOVA. 80% of DDs friends spread all over US joined sororities. Gotten very popular today.

That's because Gen Z tend to be "joiners"--much to the consternation of their Gen X parents.

Also, colleges are harder to get into these days...so take heart that the women who are there are all really bright, enthusiastic leader types. If your DD does decide to join a sorority, it's likely for the social and academic support and leadership and a sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves while also trying to find their way and not feel like a little ant in a huge setting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are girls posting on our community Facebook page looking for recommendation letters to pledge their down south sororities. WTH?

It’s a whole new world of sorority recruitment now. You need a recommendation letter to as many houses as possible or you’ll be dropped right away.

But how is this new?? Recommendation letters from alumnae have always been a requirement for many groups in large SEC schools. It's not new. It's just not necessarily a common practice at ALL schools. (BTW, those who criticize that there would be such a requirement would be the first to scream "how did you not KNOW that the girl was a racist a$$hole?!" if an unvetted new member of sorority turns out to be so....so a letter from an alumna who has her sorority's best interest at heart can say "Hey...this young woman is hard working, smart, and kind with a heart for service. Her resume speaks for itself but I also know the family personally and would be proud to recommend her." Since women are invited to join a sorority after only one week of parties--and by one week I mean a grand total of about and 2.5 hours mingling with its current members--these letters of recommendation can be a very helpful introduction of the woman to the sorority members. And a young woman who has a recommendation letter typically will be invited to at least one round of parties as a courtesy. When there are 3,000 women going through rush, a personal reference is key. This is not unlike having a reference from a friend you know who works at a company you want to work for. Your resume is your own, and you own what happens at the interview. But having a friend "vouch" to your boss that you're a stand-up candidate can get your foot in the door and open that opportunity so that you aren't just one more resume on the pile of 3,000.

It’s new if the parents didn’t go to a big Greek college. Even if you were Greek yourself, the SEC schools are on another level, and more college women are wanting to join sororities now so the recommendation letters are a big deal. But when I was in college you could go through formal recruitment and probably get a bid even if you decided to do it at the last minute (like I did!)

[Anonymous]

Is it common to rush sororities at SEC schools freshman year? I wanted DD to look at Alabama and South Carolina for the scholarships. I was kind of hoping that the Honors Colleges would provide community.

[Anonymous]

At a non southern school, is there any chance of a bid without rec letters?

I was never in a sorority, I don’t know anyone who was in any sorority that has a chapter at my daughters college, but she’s hoping to join next year. Is this something that is going to be a problem?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any moms stay at hotel while daughter goes thru Rush? DD moves in and rushes the week before school starts. It is a pretty big state school in the south.

DD went thru rush at a big southern school. She felt pretty bad about herself after getting dropped from houses she really liked and getting invited back to houses she wasn't crazy about. It was so hard because she didn't have any friends yet. I got phone calls at 7 am and phone calls at 11 pm with her crying. I don't know how I cold have helped if I had been local.

This unfortunately happens and something to keep in mind for the OP is that those houses that girls really like are usually really, really good at marketing themselves and their goal is to make girls like them and want to join. They are just really, really good at rush and rush events. So if a girl likes them and wants to join, they have done their job.

Also OP there are lots of girls who have made youtube videos about the rush process at southern schools so it's worth taking a peek at them to get an idea of the process.

This.
I wish moms understood this enough to explain it to their daughters so that they would get that. The idea from the sorority standpoint is to make EVERY GIRL WANT TO JOIN YOUR GROUP. The recruitment process is based on MUTUAL selection, so obviously if a sorority can achieve the goal of getting every girl to choose YOU...then it puts you, as a sorority, in the driver's seat as far as selecting which ones to offer membership to. And each sorority only gets to invite a set number to join so that the pledge classes have an even distribution.

Sororities do this by marketing themselves, as PP said...and appearing outgoing, fun, friendly, chatty, and interested in getting to know each girl that walks through their door....(think of it as being a good host if you are having a party. A good host makes everyone feel welcome and at ease, asks questions, nods, smiles, and generally makes sure everyone is comfortable and having a good time.) And yes, the groups that do this best ARE, in fact, made up of members who are naturally outgoing, chatty, friendly, and fun--or at least know how to project this without much effort...and tend to have (not all, but a plethora of) objectively attractive members...and so they tend to continue to attract people to their group. And when you are the group everyone wants to join, you tend to gravitate toward selecting new members who also exhibit those traits.

The fact is, there are groups that are better at this than others. (Even PP's daughter said she had preferences of which groups she WANTED to join that didn't invite her back. And the ones who did invite her back, she just wasn't feeling it.) That is likely not a knock on the girls in that group at all. But rather simply indicative of their ability to self-promote and engage in outgoing, socially confident small-talk behavior. The sororities that are favored by most young women who are going through the process tend to be at ease in social settings where you're meeting new faces and making small talk over and over again. And this confident exuberance make everyone who visits feel warm and welcomed and relaxed. EVEN IF you are a young woman who is really more chill and introverted and would click better with girls in a more laid-back house, it is hard not to get caught up in the polish and presentation of a more collectively outgoing group.

Other groups (and individuals seeking to join) who are less skilled at the small talk and who may be more introverted just don't shine or stand out by comparison during the recruitment process.

And that's an obvious flaw in an imperfect system.

It hurts to feel rejected. And that is what it feels like to want to receive an invitation that doesn't come. That other PP who compared recommendations to the job interview process got it right, I think. It hurts to apply for a job you don't get. But it doesn't mean the right job for you or right sorority for you isn't out there. And it doesn't mean that you would have been happier at the first company than you were at the company who did hire you. It's just that the first company made it appear more enticing at the onset.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At a non southern school, is there any chance of a bid without rec letters?

I was never in a sorority, I don’t know anyone who was in any sorority that has a chapter at my daughters college, but she’s hoping to join next year. Is this something that is going to be a problem?

It is not necessary at all, but never hurts. Your DD may know teachers who are sorority members though. Has she asked? Or, post on FB "any of my friends members of XYZ, ABC, or MNO? My daughter needs a reference..." and you'd be surprised how many sorority women you know who just haven't shared their affiliation with you since it doesn't always come up.

[Anonymous]

Rush for many California schools is similar to the schools in the south. It’s very insular; many SoCal girls going in as freshman have relationships with active in sororities already, plus have family members and friends in common so it’s almost pre-destined who is going to go into which house. Coming in as an outsider, it can be very hard to break through and into circle.