Anonymous wrote:The reality is that most of these girls are awful

Anonymous wrote:I'm the OP
Michigan. She was already struggling with the size of the school and had been holding out hope that this would help her with community.

Anonymous wrote:Our daughter rushed her sophomore year after transferring. She is a somewhat shy but pretty social girl, and was eager to meet new people. She enjoyed the process, met lots of great girls, and the only bid she got was from what she described as a "weird" house.
It took a while for her to get over the shock. She joined a couple of club sports, and then a couple of really active clubs. By junior year, she had settled in well. She is now a senior and the sorority thing is long ago in the rear window.
OP: Encourage your girl to continue to pursue other avenues to meet people and get involved on campus. The school our daughter transferred from was Michigan-sized but even there she found ways to be involved.

Anonymous wrote:Why in the world would she transfer?? If she cannot make friends at this school without Greek Life, what’s the logic that she can make friends at other schools?

Presumably she chose this college because she liked the campus, program, location, vibe, culture.?

If it was my kid, I would have them branch out and make new friends. I would also downplay the whole sorority thing. Have them do a meager abroad. Sounds like she needs to broaden her perspective.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone been in this position?

My daughter decided to rush and things have not gone well. She is either going to end up a lowest tier house or no house at all.
She is a lovely, fun girl with a great circle of deep high school friendships and actually had a great time in the rush activities (loved meeting the girls, thought she was having great connections) but things did not go her way. I think she hitched her star to several houses where older girls from her high school are and then didn't match with them and then fell down in the rankings. Or whatever. I'm not sure. We are not a sorority household.

The upshot is that she's pretty devastated and feeling like every friend she made this past fall (which she was feeling shaky about to begin with) will move on without her as they all are doing better in the rush process. Over winter break she had been casually mentioning wanting to transfer due to the social scene and I assume this will bring up that conversation again. I support her in whatever decision she makes.

If this happened to your daughter (sorority rush did not go well AT ALL), what ended up happening?
Please be kind. I think my child had a very healthy perspective on things but it does feel to her that everyone she knows (her roommate, her hall mates, her other friends) will be joining greek life while she will not and it feels really isolating. She doesn't care about Greek life but just deeply wants friends and a community.

Thank you!

Depends upon the school, but in this case transferring might be a good option to consider.

Anonymous wrote:I'm the OP
Michigan. She was already struggling with the size of the school and had been holding out hope that this would help her with community.

Anonymous wrote:OP here. The lowest tier houses mean she'll be separated from all her current friends. And the lower tier houses are not a guarantee themselves. She could very likely not be either of them either.

I guess my true question is (let's not get caught up in house tiering) is: what happened to your kid if they were either not matched to any house or separated from all their current friends? Did they bounce back socially? Did they transfer?

Anonymous wrote:It happened to me, back in the day.

I am shy, so Greek life was arguably not going to be a great fit for me, anyway. I rushed because most of my friends were. I actually felt like it was going decently, but I got cut by a ton of houses.

I quit with just one round to go.

I got deeply involved with an extracurricular that I had tried freshman year. THAT was where I found my people. I wound up having a wonderful college experience. I think this would be the case for your daughter, too. Hopefully, the friends she's already made are true friends, and they can still be friends. But the girls will be busy with pledging. I'd DEFINITELY encourage your daughter to get involved in a different way. Maybe a choir, an intramural sport, an art club, a job? Good luck!