When I searched Google for the OP I used the search terms below:

""Greekchat Arkansas Sorority Recruitment""

Google brought up pages and pages of information all from Greekchat.

Hi ArkSis - What an exciting time for you and your family! I know that you must be excited for your sister as she prepares for recruitment. I can't tell from your post, but are you an initiate of Zeta Tau Alpha at Arkansas, or somewhere else? If at arkansas, was it in the last 5 years or earlier? Arkansas Greek life has gone through many wonderful changes over the years, specifically house total and quota have doubled in just the past 4 years.

Just as all have said, Arkansas is a competative recruitment and all 8 chapters are great. Preparing for recruitment by obtaining recommendations is very important on this campus. As a Sorority woman, hopefully you have some personal connections with members of npc groups to help her with those. With the pnm pool over 1300, its important to realize that many of the chapters have more legacies than they have room in their pledge classes. Keeping an open mind is important.

Tell your sister to enjoy her summer and preparing for recruitment! The ua greek life facebook page was making rumblings about opening up registration before June 1st - but since that is tomorrow its not a huge deal :)

Feel free to pm me if you have other questions

Great posts Irishpipes and Wavycutchip. Please keep an open mind at all times and remember that there are two sororities, Alpha Chi Omega and Phi Mu, colonizing after formal recruitment. Being a founding member has many benefits and gives you a chance to be a leader from the start. WPS!

I'm new to this chat thing so if I"m not suppose to "quote" everytime I want to reply to something I'm sorry! This was very very helpful! That is huge! I thought my pledge class of 60 was big!! WOW! Thank you so much!!!

I echo what my friends Irishpipes and Wavycutchip have posted. Arkansas is a great but very competitive system.

Is your sister coming to the university from out of state? If so, that will reinforce the need for recs, recs, recs!

And, like MapleStAlum (love your name, by the way!) says, we are welcoming two groups to campus this year. This is exciting news for the Greek system!

Go Hogs!

No, no need to quote every time you reply unless you want to stress a particular item within a previous post. Then you can quote and just delete the parts you don't want....

Just to emphasize, getting into these colonies is going to be very, very, very, very, very, very, VERY competitive. The national volunteers are going to be putting the women who want to join under a microscope. The groups have a lot to lose if these colonies don't go REALLY well and they don't want to make any mistakes.

Sorry if that sounds overdramatic, but I don't want anyone to think for a millisecond that getting into the colonies will be "easier" than going through rush. It will be far harder.

My friend is going to Arkansas this fall and I am looking into the school for next year. We were talking about recs and she said I should start thinking of people now for recs and letters of support. She has been working on getting hers for months. Do the Arkansas sororities treat recs and letters of support equally? I know we definitely need recs, but are the letters of support just as important?

I did not mean to imply that becoming a pnm of a colony was going to be easy. I agree that recruitment is tough, I just wanted to make it known that there will be colonies to consider also. Any pnm needs to get recommendations for these groups as well.

Yes, letters and recs are basically treated equally. I suggest you keep a file with names of women and their contact info as you find out who you know that is a member of those groups on UA's campus. Then, next year, you will have this part of the process completed. If your friend is from your same town, she will be a great resource for this info, obviously.

Wait, wait, wait...do you mean "letters of support" as in "letters from active collegians"? Some groups do not treat them the same as all.

I'm confused, I thought you needed recs even if you had a letter of support...it was my understanding that the rec was more the "official" thing that some groups require to pledge a woman. Then again if someone was going to write you a letter of support I don't know why they wouldn't write you a rec.

I'll bite :)


First, mellymoo - that is very exciting! I hope that you will make a college visit this fall to Fayetteville! I loved my 4 years there, and it is beautiful in the fall!


Second, as far as the questions "Do Arkansas sororities treat recs and letters of support equally and are letters of support equally important" - my first response would be that it boarders on membership selection criteria, and as you will read all over GC, that is not something that we talk about - because it is specific to our chapters and our membership procedures are private and only discussed during selection by the active members of the collegiate chapter.


However, what I will say is that in the Little Rock Alumnae Panhellenic, this was something discussed quite extensively, and we wrote the following in our Greek Life booklet this year: "You may find that you have more than one member of a specific sorority who would like to write a recommendation for you. Because each specific sorority’s recommendation form contains standard information, many times one sorority alumnae will write the official recommendation, and then attach additional alumnae’s (from that same sorority) letters of support to the official recommendation. These letters of support just give additional information to the chapter concerning character qualities and individual knowledge of the potential new member. In most cases, this is a good way to save paperwork and is useful to the sorority chapter; however please check with your college/university’s Greek Life office to confirm that this is an appropriate practice on a particular campus." (from this link: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0Bw_o1msD5zEILXJXWXdUdXZVVjg, pg. 5)


Yes, for most chapters on campus this is a normal practice (have a recommendation written, and then the rec writter will attach letters of support from additional alumnae from that same sorority). This happens when you have chapters on campus for over 100 years and large alumnae support/involvement = lots of alumnae who may know a PNM. However, it seems to me it is much more helpful to have recommendations and letters of support from alumnae who actually know the PNM, and not just something to "check off" the recruitment prep check list. Remember, there are close to 1500 women going through recruitment - even if only 50% of the PNMs had recomendations to a chapter (this is only an estimate, and I would contend a very low estimate), that is stil 750 recommendations. Now, multiply that by 2 or 3 letters of support, and that is a bunch of paperwork, and still a whole lot more recommendations than spots open from quota for the chapter to take. As all have said, recommendations are a tool (as well as letters of support), but they are just a door opening. Set yourself up by getting good recommendations and letters, but also prepare for recruitment in all the other ways listed on GC. IMHO.

And keep in mind that some groups accept letters in pplace of a rec form itself. I know my group gives just as much credance to one as to the other.

Having participated in this aspect of the last colony at Arkansas, I can attest to the truth of this post. AOII chose to initially colonize with fewer than we were allowed in order to make sure we had the right mix. We were careful not to relax any standards just to get numbers. At a campus like Arkansas, maintaining - no, exceeding - standards is crucial. You simply have to get off on the right foot. PNMs should get recs for the colonizing groups as well as the existing chapters. Each PNM will want to have all her bases covered. Even if a PNM is SURE she will be pledging an existing group, she really has no idea how her recruitment will go, so she should be prepared with recs to Phi Mu and Alpha Chi Omega. Those groups will likely participate in round 1, and she may fall in love with one of them. Recs are extremely helpful to the colonizing sororities.

As for the recs v. letters of support debate, if I were the PNM, I wouldn't assume that anyone has written me a rec. Even if someone promises to write one, life happens. Sometimes they don't get mailed in, despite the best of intentions. If I thought I already had a rec for a group, and someone else asked if I wanted one, I would never decline, and would suggest that if she felt comfortable doing so, would she add a personal letter of support.