Amen. There would be a lot fewer unhappy little girls around right now if it was better understood that the sorority world is a meritocracy only up to a point and that you'd better have your expectations in check before you show up as an unknown out-of-state PNM at a big state school recruitment. The numbers are really brutal unless you're a Christie Brinkley look-alike with good party BS and a Rhodes scholar-in-waiting resume.

I'm the first to admit that I benefitted from my family's connections by staying in state, but it's really not a very healthy process in many ways and it's refreshing to see people fess up to it a bit.

Well, and here's the BIG problem with Suzie with the 4.0 and the utopian, merit-based line of thinking...

Suzie with the 4.0 who thinks it's a meritocracy & should get whatever she wants because she's the epitome of "perfect-ness" (grades/recs/cute/extras). She's ALWAYS gotten what she wants because of her perfect-ness. Life, up & to this point HAS pretty much been a meritocracy. Top softball player? On the varsity squad. Smartest person in the room? Valedictorian. Most beautiful? Homecoming queen (ok, not everywhere, but maybe "Most Beautiful" in the yearbook?). You get the idea.

This is their first time faced with something that they can't obtain just by being "the best".


ETA: I re-read & I'm using a little hyperbole here, I know.

^^ That's what I was going to say too! It would be really helpful if potential PNM's (and parents) would read this thread in the months prior to rush.

Networking is a huge part of the system... just like most things in life, it's important to learn how to play the game to be successful.

This is part of the problem. They're not little girls. They're women. They're adults. Yes, they are young, but they need to figure things out in the world. Learn that life isn't fair. Learning to be prepared. Learning to keep an open mind to the world of possibility. These aren't just things related to sororities and recruitment- these are life skills that these women need to learn.

I agree with this. Life is full of disappointments. They need to get over that the sense of entitlement like the "should I promise a large donation of money so they'll accept my pretty princess" as was demonstrated in another thread. While rejection is hard, it's something that will have to be dealt with more than a few times in someone's life.

SN: I'm sick of all these parents on here trying to "fix" everything for their daughters that don't have a successful recruitment. I understand wanting to help but it seems like there's a lot of parents on here asking what to do instead of their children. My mother would've told me to act like an adult and deal with it myself.

I'm not sure anyone would have read it then.

Don't get me wrong, it's a great thread. I think it's spot on. But so often here, nobody knows that we're talking to them until it's too late.

Or maybe they would have read, and you all would have spent the summer explaining that the summer after high school is a little late to go to these camps for the first time.

For whatever it's worth, I don't see a whole lot of summer camp action with the girls from here, but I'm kind of in the yankee suburbs.

I didn't know there were Jewish camps until my boss started telling stories of how he was a counselor at one. I always went to a non-denominational, but didn't know it then. I just know there were kids of all religions there.

I agree with what the OP says about summer camps. WHile the one I went to was not at all elite and was a mixture of all socio-economic classes (they had "camperships" for children who couldn't afford it), we saw the same kids year after year. Most were from a 25 mile radius but many were from further out. Fast-forward to college....guess who I ran into during recruitment? Many of the campers I knew from 10 years prior.

I didn't realize I was networking at 8 years old.

Exactly. Some parents are very savvy to this and direct their children toward activities that are designed for meeting the "right" kinds of friends; for other children it happens more serendipitously, but networking is exactly what's going on.

Not to derail the camp thing (since I brought it up), but the College Town visits are pretty significant also. From my recent rec writing for UGA girls, a LOT of those girls have spent time in Athens before Fall semester. Or at beach weekends with sorority members. Younger and older members of the same soccer team, or church group, or camp, or just same high school...whatever the situation. Or a senior in high school went to some fraternity ball with an older guy friend and met sisters there. I absolutely am not making dirty rushing accusations, because this is just friendship that goes back before anything that could be considered dirty rushing. And no, it doesn't happen with every PNM or sorority. But it happens a LOT more than I imagined it did - and I would have been in trouble if I had rushed at UGA in 2011, because my mama would NEVER have let me go off to Athens unchaperoned before my freshman year of college! :p


Anyway, probably this thread should be entitled "The Power of Networking," and yes, it would be great if helimoms read it, but as you all have pointed out, it is too late to do anything about networking if you are two weeks away from recruitment. I just hope that it gives moms some perspective, and they can prepare their daughters, for just what the playing field looks like. Again, this should NOT discourage anyone from rushing - it just helps explain the field better so daughters don't wonder what they did wrong. At some competitive schools, one time out of ten it is bad rushing game (shy, obnoxious, rude) or reputation, one time out of ten it is grades or non-freshman status, one time out of ten it is not maximizing their options, and seven times out of ten it is that there wasn't anyone in the house who already knew you and fought for you (or not enough people to fight for you). That's all. PNM likely didn't do anything wrong. She just didn't have the power of networking working for her.

This is how it works in the Ivy League, too. The eating clubs at Princeton, final clubs at Harvard, secret societies at Yale and Penn...people went to camp and prep school and Head of the Charles together their whole lives. Their dads brought them to football games and reunions and they met their dads' friends and their dads' friends' kids. Sure, some unknown people impress the members as freshmen and get invited to join, but a lot of club spots are effectively spoken for before anyone gets to college.

Which brings its own problems.

Parents can and should provide, to their best of their abilities, opportunities for their kids to make a wide circle of friends not because it will help them meet the "right" kinds of people, but simply because it leads to a richer life.