That's why I said supposedly...;) I can't imagine how any group that purports to practice gracious living can act in such an ill-bred way.

And before anyone gets their knickers in a twist, I'm sure this happens at competitive schools in the north, south, east and west.

I think people a lot of are generally hypcritic .. think Church goers. However, they can only be that way if other people let them get away with it.

I tend to call my friends on stuff, and I certainly won't hesitate to call out people I overhear being stupid.

I think most intelligent people generally take the "tiers" with a grain of salt. But it's also easy to say that at most schools they are pretty ingrained in Greek culture and that even those who don't believe they mean much could rattle off which groups are in which tiers in a heartbeat.

My school has been named to me as an example of a system that doesn't really follow the typical "tier" system and I'm inclined to agree. Although you could probably divide the sororities up if you tried, for the most part I agree with those who have told me that there is a strong "top two" or "top three" and then the rest of the sororities are really not too different in strength -- it all depends on what you're looking for in a group. Ditto the fraternities.

I wouldn't really say that there's any concrete way of figuring "tiers" out, although rush figures would be one way for the sororities. But then, I can think of many chapters on this campus who would rank lower or higher than their return rates suggest simply because the way rushees view the groups is a little different from the way the rest of campus does.

And I would say on your campus there's also a very distinct bottom two houses - and the others are lumped in the middle. I know this from my GDI friends, so obviously word gets around.

I started to go into in-depth analysis of the two potential "bottom tier" houses and why I disagree but realized that might be a bit much for an online message board where nobody else knows what we're talking about. Suffice it to say that I think the problem with deciding what groups are "bottom tier" is that, unlike at most schools, reputation and numbers don't correlate at the UW. Some of the groups with strong reputations are not the biggest on campus, and vice versa. And I think that is the problem with the two groups I'm assuming you're referring to as the "bottom tier" groups here: one has decent numbers but not a great rep, the other has low numbers but a decent rep. So it's hard to say where they would fall in the spectrum of "tiers" here -- because they are so fluid.

The fraternities would be even more complicated to divide up.

And I think that in general GDIs have an oversimplified view of the Greek system (especially here where they are generally very anti- or at best neutral-Greek) because their view depends entirely on who they know in the Greek system to pass down gossip and news. If you asked most of my friends, they'd probably guess that Kappa, Tri Delt and Pi Phi compose the top tier because they don't know girls in any other groups! . . . it's all relative.

All of which explains one of the reasons why the whole "tier" thing should be taken with a grain of salt.

Quite true!

While every NPC sorority has chapters that are "top," "middle," or "lower" tier on their repective campuses, I am under the impression that some NPC sororities are more likely than others to be in the "top" tier on campuses where they have chapters. This is not a universal rule, of course, and I could be wrong. It also has nothing to do with the quality of the sisterhood, the friendships, and the values of any GLO.

Please note that I'm NOT saying that the "top three, top four or top five" NPC orgs are always in the top tier, just that it's more likely than not that one or two or three of them will be in the top tier if they're on campus. Also, as has been said in many threads, the "traditionally Southern sororities" may constitute a special case in their areas of greatest alumnae concentration and strength.

I hate these types of threads especially when recruitment is around the corner at some schools.

I don't see why this seems to be the prevailing feeling here at GC. Let's face it, at many schools, top/middle/bottom tier is going to be an issue to some people in the Greek system. For those who aren't worried about petty status issues, they won't worry about them regardless of whether or not they know they exist before rush. And for those who ARE worried about status, more likely than not they are already highly aware of what groups fall into which tiers at their school. And if by some chance they aren't, they might as well get used to the idea before they pledge instead of being shocked with it afterwards and depledging when they find out the sorority they joined is at the bottom of the middle tier.


Talking about these subjects doesn't mean any of us endorse them.

That's right, why not talk about it? It's out there...no use pretending it doesn't happen. Don't be afraid! :p

Especially given the fact that this is Spring recruitment coming up and anyone involved will have been on campus for at least a semester. I'd wonder about someone who had been at a school for a few months, wanted to rush, yet didn't know a lot about their own school's greek system.

Ditto.

Let's stop romanticizing Southern Rush (I know you weren't, 33. But it happens so much on this board it's insane!). For some of those schools, the system works for the girls who thrive in that culture. They'll have daughters, and the cycle continues. Most of us don't have to worry about it. :)

I don't mind these threads at all--in fact, I enjoy them. But sometimes we tend to focus on one aspect in particular.

I actually don't agree that mine is the "prevailing feeling here at GC" since I seem to be the only one who posted it. I do see your point though. I still don't like this thread. *shrug*

Indiana University definitly has a tier system.

An interesting thing that I have noticed about this phenomena is where people place themeselves.

Houses at the bottom of the food chain will claim to be a "middle house" while the houses that are in the middle will claim to be a "top house".

None of the bottom houses will say "I belong to a bottom house" and of course the houses that are on top rarely talk about social tiers since they dont really need to. In fact, on average, they tend to be the most laid back about "social tiers". Its all of the crazy middle and bottom tier houses stepping on top of eachother, trying to improve their reputation that cause the anomosity. (was that a runon sentence?)

Our school has so many fraternity and sororities that the hard corps "tier disciples" will even go so far as to break up houses into smaller tiers.

For exampled...."XYZ" sorority isnt a bad sorority, but they're only a lower-middle house so none of the better houses will pair with them" or "I wanted to be in a top fraternity, but I joined ABC...they're not bad...they're at the bottom of the top tier".

I had two sorority friends that loved to talk greek, so I was always kept abreast of the latest social developments.

One thing I positive thing I will say about IU is that it is not impossible to improve your fraternity or sororities social reputation.

It can be tough, especially for sororities, but in my last 2 or 3 years there, I saw 2 or 3 fraternities literally rise from the very bottom to the top class with lots of hard work in recruitment and campus involvement. And when I look at it, their formula was so simple, I'm amazed that a lot of other groups dont try it!

AOII's colonization went very well, as did Phi Sigma Kappa's.

But the thread loves you Cream lol ;)