Originally Posted by ivygreekgirl
My recruitment story doesn't necessarily have a happy ending but I wanted to share in case the advice helps other PNMs.
I rushed at an Ivy League school back in the early '00s and for a northern school, it was way more competitive than I anticipated. I wish I had known about Greekchat back then since the advice on this site is invaluable.
Back when I went through recruitment, there were either 12 or 13 houses on my campus (sorry, can't remember exact number). My school had a deferred recruitment, which meant you had to come back to campus a bit earlier than everyone else. Because of this, most of my friends opted not to go through recruitment.
Unfortunately, when I went through recruitment, I was shy and honestly, a bit socially awkward. I was not good at small talk at all. I didn't have a ton of friends in high school so I was looking for the sisterhood aspect of a sorority in college.
Round 1 was a complete whirlwhind and involved walking around in freezing temperatures in parkas. I lived in the South so I had never experienced such cold temperatures. As soon as we got into the warm house, my fingers and toes would finally stop tingling and my nose immediately started to run.
After Round 1, I was cut from all the houses except for four. Most of the conversations in the early rounds were: what's your major, where are you from, what did you do over winter break. I didn't really do a good job of steering the convo away from these standard questions so it's not a surprise that I didn't click with anyone.
After Round 2, I only had 3 houses left and they were all considered "bottom tier" houses, which I didn't really care about. Throughout the next few rounds, I was completely conflicted as to which house to join and felt stressed out/overwhelmed. Looking back, I should've dropped and gone through informal recruitment or waited another year but I made a snap decision to join my house.
Like the other two "bottom" house, this house was struggling with numbers but the girls seemed nice. I figured that all the new members could help turn it around.
One of the aspects of joining a struggling house that I didn't think about was that the actives and my new pledge class were a mixed bag. Everyone wanted something different out of our sorority. Some girls wanted to be the anti-sorority house and others wanted strict rules on how to do our hair/makeup to help our ranking improve. The amount of cliques and conflict within our small house was astounding. In the end, my house, along with the other 2 houses I preffed, ended up closing. Not sure what happened to the others, but with ours, the internal conflicts certainly didn't help.
Anyway, I wanted to share my story in case it helps PNMs. I feel like sometimes women are warned to stay away from "top" houses since they're considered to be catty but it can happen in "bottom" houses too.
You should also go with your heart and your gut. My gut told me to drop from my house and either remain independent or re-rush in the future but I lacked self confidence to do so. While I made a few good friends, the years I was in my house were also some of the most stressful parts of college.
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