Ugh.
I don't think its snobbery at all, but at my school only sororities wear lettered shirts. A conservative polo with your organizations name or any of a million shirts for rush, semiformal, philanthropy, etc. are great ways to show which fraternity you are a member of. For the most part, however, dressing nicely is practically a requirement.

See, up here...those polos are what the 60 year old alumni wear at homecoming. And I don't understand why party shirts with tacky screen prints and slogans are any less "gaudy" than letters.

What's cool & accepted varies so much from campus to campus (even within geographical regions). Let's just trust that the original poster KNOWS her own campus & let her make her boyfriend a shirt! LOL

I remember when I was at UNC-Chapel Hill, it was not at all cool for students to wear any kind of shirt/sweatshirt that promoted the UNC Tarheels. What was cool was wearing shirts from other campuses.

Well said. And I think it's kinda funny that it was cooler to wear other college's shirts instead of UNC.

I agree with you, but when you don't got it, you can't spend it. You have to resort to craftiness, as I often did in college also.

yeah, it was ok to wear NYU stuff to a degree, but more students wore other college stuff. but i think that is because lots of ppl transfer in from other schools... and those sweatshirts are expensive!

if she has $ to spend on crafts... she should save up a little more and just get the professional stitched letters. i dont know any guy who would wear a handmade/craft lettered shirt.

but hey, that again may be regional/campus difference.

That's funny.
Cuz one of my friends who was visiting me at school noticed (during dinner) that EVERYONE in the cafeteria was wearing either a Northface jacket or an school-related piece of clothing.:D

Actually, wearing UNC shirts on campus now isn't a big deal at all. Everyone has hundreds of Carolina shirts, and you wear them all the time. I do understand where PhiGam is coming from on this point, because while girls are starting to wear stitched letter shirts on campus, the guys practically never do. My boyfriend (who is in a fraternity) says they look too "guido" and not classy...his words, not mine! They tend to have lots of date party shirts, etc. that they wear all the time. It's interesting to me how different this is on other campuses!

And our Phi Gamma Delta chapter here also goes by Phi Gam. I never understood why they had a FIJI Island formal every year until I came across this site!

Where are you getting your stuff? Is it decent quality? When I was in school, long ago, the cheapest lettered sweatshirt I had was my chapter letters. $35 due to bulk discount. Today I think the hoodies run closer to $50-$60.

I have a sweatshirt like this (in my letters of course) for $30.

i've gotten many compliments on this one. i've also had it for about 2 years so... yeah, i'd say its decent.

Most hoodies I've seen are 40-50 bucks. Pretty sure I paid somewhere in there for mine and it was high quality in my opinion - since letters were popular where I went, i went through a lot of letters. I found that the stitching that goes completely around, as opposed to the "triangle stitch" (not sure what the technical term for it is) looked much better but many do the cheaper stitch and they still come out ok. T-shirts were usually around $30 and long-sleeded were $38-ish, and hoodies were $50 easy.

And lets not forget the sentimental value the letters would have if she made them herself... If they look decent, why wouldn't he wear them?

2 of my sisters and I went to Target and bought hoodies for $11.00 and got the letters sewn on at another place. So total, I paid $23 for my sweatshirt and I am in love with it :D

oh awesome! that is so weird, cause i was just in Target tonight, saw a really nice goldenrod zip-up hoodie that i was like "i should get letters sewn on!"

^^ Do I sense sarcasm...?

To get some letters made (which are just going to be stitched and cut by someone else) it would cost me about 30+ for a tshirt and about 50+ for a hoodie.

to make it myself, a tshirt costs about 10 bucks, i can get all the fabric i need for about 7, and then i'd need a pair of scissors and a sewing machine (which i already have access to).....and my letters would look just as good as getting them professionally done. You make it sound like anything i make would look like a second grader made them. I think not.