Yield protection!!! |
My DD is in her 3rd year at UVA, and while she doesn't participate in Greek life, two of her roommates do. One is an immigrant and one is a foreign student. I secretly cringe at the type of lessons they are learning about this aspect of American culture. They joined primarily for the social and business contacts and I don't doubt there are positive aspects, but the emphasis on looks, social class, and other subjective factors of evaluating and categorizing human beings is truly shameful. |
Being from NOVA is a huge strike against getting into top tier, in fact. Absolutely works against you. |
+1 million |
100% |
Forgive my ignorance, but why does that work against you? |
Bingo. They have to have a pretty good idea, yes. The top groups are required to drop about 50% of the girls after day one. Why? Because the numbers each chapter is allowed to invite back is varied and based on the percentage of women who rank those chapters at the top. They look at the past three years of performance and the percentage of women they invited who chose to return to them each round. At the end of the week, in order to get a pledge class of 50, the top group basically only needs about 54 girls at preference bc most of the girls they choose will choose them back. Middle Groups would need about double that, and lower groups need about 3x that. If top houses were allowed to keep inviting large numbers of girls and stringing them along all week, they would have 250 at their last night and then still only be able to invite 50 to join. Once you get that it’s a math equation, it’s not so personal, even though it has to feel that way for about a minute. It’s mostly based on resume and less so on that first 20-minute meeting. The top houses tend to be the girls that have a high social competence and make people feel love bombed and excited. The houses that are less successful in recruiting tend to be less comfortable with small talk, but that doesn’t make them any less fun in real life! Through the whole week, even with the house you end up in, you’ve really only spent a total of three hours there. So if you want the sorority experience, just go with an open mind to give each group an chance and you’ll be fine. |
+1 A close friend's daughter went through this last year. She's very pretty, smart, and personable, was popular in high school and participated in a bunch of extracurriculars, volunteered in her community, has money (no fancy camps but club sports, international vacations)... everything sororities want "on paper" yet she got cut from all but her bottom few choices midway through rush. She ended up joining one of those and seems to be having a good experience, but at the time, she literally wanted to drop out/transfer over this, and my friend had serious concerns about her DD's mental health. |
Different folks, different priorities or so seems based on prior poster that called out girls going to entirely different college to better their rush odds (Alabama/Auburn thread above). |
I’ve never heard this either, but I’ve never done a member analysis of the makeup of UVA chapters. Groups tend to want to recruit from the same high schools where they already have members. There are exceptions of course, but it helps to either be known by members before rush starts, or be from a high school that has a high population of women going Greek. |
I’m sorry for your friend’s daughter’s experience. But I guarantee you that the chapter she ended up in is super happy to get her and she will be an asset to their recruiting efforts next round. And that’s the way a middle chapter becomes competitive with a top chapter! |
Not most, but some of the very negative comments in this thread start to remind me of the univ of MD sorority letter that circulated about 10 years ago- from President of chapter there? It was so widely circulated after leaked that even Michael Shannon did a reading of it. If never heard of it and look it up, know that it is NOT safe language for work or home if smaller kids (or maybe for even some adults!). |
I’m a few decades past learning this first hand, but if probably hasn’t changed that much (considering the three top-tiers are exactly the same). The NoVa kids are so plentiful, nothing stands out about them. They’re all kind of lumped together and people get tired of hearing that you’re yet another kid from Northern Virginia. I guess certain private school girls from NoVa might have an edge, but in general, these super wealthy out-of-state girls have no interest whatsoever in knowing the average suburban girl from TJ or Robinson or whatever. Different universes. |
Exactly this. There's nothing exotic or elite or even interesting about your basic girl from FCPS or LCPS or Alexandria, APS or PW County. |
So it’s all a show. |