My best friend, who is from Marietta, ranked ADPi over another sorority after pref because it would "look better" to her friends back home.

This is the problem I see with deferred rush. Although 18 y.o. freshmen women SHOULD ignore the chatter and gossip of sorority reputations (especially when said by the fraternity men), many times they do not. Hearing for an entire semester about how one house only gets ugly girls, one has the trust-fund babies, and one is all athletes doesn't help.

So true. Arkansas got rid of deferred rush after I rushed and it was a good thing they did. During the summer before the freshman year, girls could have "rush dates" and it about killed the girls who didn't. At fraternity parties, they heard all the gossip, plus the freshmen lived together in halls...they had their minds set on which groups they would accept way before recruitment started. Probably most of them had a good idea before they even started school.

The silence rules (year long) were a joke!

But it seems that at places like Arkansas, Georgia, Ole Miss, the majority of the women coming in to rush already know that anyway. Wouldn't it make more sense to wait a semester to see if they can actually handle college classes and pressures?

There's enough of the reputations and gossip that still happens with-before-school-even-starts fall recruitment. I can't imagine what it would be like at Georgia with deferred.

There have already been a couple of posts on Facebook groups for incoming freshmen housing detailing the reputations of the chapters. Not good. Told my daughter and her friends that ***all together now*** "discretion is the key". I told my daughter that she may not understand right now that saying certain things is just not done, but as soon as she is in a sorority she will.

I hope.;)

33Girls,

I didn't see your post, but I wanted to throw in my two cents in response.

At this point at UGA, the admission standards are so tough that most of them are going to be able to handle it academically, and like a lot of other places, the all sorority GPA average is higher than the rest of the students average GPA. Joining isn't likely to hurt them this way, and it may create some positive pressure to do well.

I apologize that I can't remember what campus you are from and advise, but one of the weird things to keep in mind is the scale of UGA recruitment. Figuring out a way to take 1200 girls to 18 houses for first round and get the results to them etc, it a big job although it decreases a little as the rounds go by.

I do know they can manage it other places while classes are going on, but if you suggested to the members and advisers that in addition to everything that recruitment currently requires, they were now going to try to do it at the start of second semester, while classes were going on, I don't think it would go over so well.

I really would represent something of a revolution logistically and we all know how most people deal with change.

That's why I said "and pressures." They might hate the environment - they might miss their hometown - they might hate their major - the money situation might be more than they can handle - many factors figure into people transferring after a semester that don't really have anything to do with whether they can handle the classes academically. Of course, with the shortened pledge programs, most of them are probably already initiated. And there go your secrets and rituals out the door.

I know that theoretically once people are in a sorority they are more likely to stay on the campus, but some of the things I mentioned can't be remedied by sorority membership. I'm not saying once you're there for a year you won't ever transfer. It's just that high school to college is a big transition and I don't see the merit in piling a decision that will effect your life on top of it right away.

I don't think that the schools I mentioned can do rush while class is happening, but with the amount of women who want to participate I don't think there would be any problem in asking them to come back a week before spring semester for recruitment.

They already come back right after New Year's in the spring, I can't see them volunteering to be there a week early plus a week earlier than that for the actives.

Plus I just don't see it happening at most of the SEC schools--there's such competition for "the right girls" and heaven knows, cheating was absolutely, wildly rampant when we had sophomore rush at Arkansas. Freshman year was miserable for the girls who wanted so badly to be Greek.

I think it's scheduled as seven days right now, with the last, since it's bid day, overlapping with the first day of classes. Classes began on January 8th this semester, so maybe it would work.

You may be right. I don't know how it would play out.

If I remember correctly, I once ran across the results of a study into the possibility of deferred recruitment at UGA.
The studied how it worked on similar campuses and decided fall worked better. I'll look for the link.

ETA: Carnation is right about starting right after New Year; classes started on the eight but the orientation and registration stuff is earlier. I think campus opened back up and got rolling on the third or fourth. I don't think you could get rush in.

http://www.uga.edu/studentaffairs/as...ment_Study.pdf



I don't remember what the exact conclusions were, but it was in 2005, and here it is 2007 and I don't think they've made any moves toward deferring.

Yuck, that wouldn't work. Why such a short break??

My daughter is going to the same school as her older sister and I hope this doesn't happen to her, too. They are two different people, but when you have to make cuts, unfortunately in-house legacies seem to be the first on the chopping block. I sure hope she gets the same chance to find the right place for her that her sister did...so while it's nice to have somebody pulling for you, there's also the negative side as well.

When I was in college we had two sisters in our house who were also legacies through their mother, and when their baby sister went through rush she went DG--it was such a SCANDAL! :D

We should probably all point out any chance we get that maybe the girls should leave legacy information off the little resumes they often make for rec writers. You can't list on the recommendation what you don't know.

And maybe we should mention to the folks who we know write recs that it may not be helpful to pass along the information that we know about legacy status in other groups. I know I would try to avoid giving any information that would be harmful to the girl.

If for any reason you didn't think a girl was right for a particular chapter, noting her legacy status alone would seem like a weird way to make that clear.

NUBlue and Blue, will you list her status on the application or hope that people don't figure it out?

Actually, she is not going to UGA. Many of her friends are, though.