It's not really a hijack because it does affect the rushees. The admissions requirements are very different now. Georgia is very difficult to get into so lots of good students apply to neighboring states making the applicant pools larger there. That's just onje reason some state universities are still safety schools but nothing like it was.
So lots of the girls going through rush at some state schools are high gpa, high SAT, super girls making it harder to stand out.

Re: the focus on GPA, it makes me think of when colleges wanted the most well-rounded students. Now the focus is on the well rounded student body, where each member has a strength. I think the sorority is the same. If all the members are leaders, whom will they lead? Each house needs scholars, athletes, nurturers, organizers, leaders, and yes, followers. So,imho, the gpa is only one of the things to consider.

Standards for state schools in general have gone up considerably. I don't think that someone would get into a flagship state school with a 2.5 GPA out of high school if they didn't have everything else going for them.

Thanks for the replies. I guess as more people apply for college (thanks to better financial aid options, better college preparation, and stronger high school academic programs), the applicant pool is larger, and the cutoffs occur at a higher level.

When I was in high school, 98% of my graduating class went to a 4-year college. I wonder what the average is, for the country, by region, state, etc., and amongt public and private/parochial schools.

What are your high schools like in terms of people going onto 4-year schools? I am interested in finding out if there is a lower percentage because application processes are more stringent.

And high school grade inflation is pretty terrible at most schools, so a 2.5 wouldn't point to the likelihood of being successful at most four year colleges these days, either.

I know that in my graduating class (in 2004) 96% of my 623 member class went onto college. I can't remember if that was for 4 year colleges or if it included community college.

As for state schools, I know that UVA is really hard to get into. There was one girl in my class who was a UVA legacy, had a 3.8, lots of AP classes, a great SAT score, and captain of the dance team. She didn't get in.

From what I know about 4 year top school (generally NCAA Div 1 not ivy league etc) much goes on the SAT ACT score/combo grades. That is the great equalizer. I am going to go through some files on my computer and post some more info.

Here is one of the articles. Yes there are tons of smart, athletic and carings kids.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...nion-rightrail

The bottom line is that if you cannot achieve a certain GPA - without something as time consuming as pledging and membership in a GLO - how can you possibly achieve it while being a pledge/member?

I do agree. From what I've read about SEC rush, there are hundreds of girls going through and most all of them have near 4.0 GPAs with tons of organizations & community service and maybe even a pagent tiara to boot. If you're missing a vital part of that (i.e. grades) I don't know how well rush would go compared to the other sorority-hopefuls.

I don't know anything about SEC schools, but I know Texas is the same way. I had a 3.9 gpa, very high SATs, great resume, tons of AP classes, loads of community service... but I didn't even bother applying to UT as I was not in the top 10% of my class. (I don't know about other states, but top 10% students in Texas are all automatically admitted to any Texas public school. When I applied to college, Texas was the only university who didn't also allow high SAT scores as automatic admission. I was auto admit everywhere else but knew I would never come close to getting into Texas.) From what I hear about SEC schools, they sound as intense (or even more intense) than UT.

Of course, there are still state schools that are safety schools. But from what I hear, UT courses are just as challenging as the courses in my private school.