What I would not have given for $500 dues. Ours ran about $1700/ semester out of the house. This price included a meal plan, socials, and parlor fees as well as all national dues. T shirts, pictures, and other things were extra.

IIRC mine were $250 a semester, plus parlor fee ($150) and any extras like t-shirts and recruitment/Bid Day shirts. I think ours were about average for the campus. I don't remember who had the highest dues, but they weren't significantly higher than ours were, and the lowest were $5 less a month I think.

$2500 meals covered/4000 to live in the house

That's generally what we did at my chapter. I'm not sure if all Alpha Zeta chapters are that way, but it was that way when I was in school at OSU.

my regular dues, social dues, cost of living in the house, cost of buying clothes for socials, baked goods for sales, ect. I'm paying about 1,000 a semester or more. Yikes

my chapter pay $250 for dues, per semester. they go towards paying national fees, and then some of the money goes towards budgets for each position in the sorority. we've been thinking of raising our dues to include our badge in it, but so far, they haven't done that yet.