One other thing. We live in El Paso which is much closer to Az. ASU or UA than Austin. My understanding is at these schools you don't even needs recs, but it is nice to have them. Panhellenic takes no one to lunch etc here. Every year girls from here get into sororites at UT A&M and Tech. Not to mention LSU, ASU, etc. So don't be discouraged if you are not from a big city cause we are in the middle of no where.

As a proud member of the Texas Greek system, I can honestly say full body shots are in no way to "weed" or "cut" out people early on. As Zeta mentioned people do not look like their head shots always. In fact many of these PNM's have very professionally done photos that are show little to no resemblance of them at all, or are not very recent. Full body shots help chapters look at girl and recognize her with more ease.

Also there are numerous out of staters in the NPC sororities, and your state of resident has no weight on the recruitment process. We have girls from Chicago, Virginia, Georgia, Mississippi, New York and the list goes on and that is only in the handful that I personally know of.

Recruitment at Texas is one of the most complex recruitments because we boast overwhelming numbers in prospective new members. My pledge class year was a record at UT. Which is a reason why letters of rec are pushed so strongly and actually required by many of the NPC sororities.

But I urge those who doubt the sincerity of some of these comments to go and look up these websites of the sororities. Look at pictures of these girls and read articles about these people, and you will see that the sterotypical view of the sorority girl is not present at UT. These girls are brilliant, fun, and extremely involved in their communities. You do not have to be Cindy Crawford to do any of these things. When we interview PNM's we look for common interests. We look for previous activites from high school and other parts of their life. The recruitment process is about being yourself and finding the best fit for YOU.

I urge PNM's and their families to give recruitment open minds and open hearts and please do not take any of the negative views on this board seriously. I encourage you to speak with alumnas who have been there and gone through it, and decide for yourself.

UT is a big school, but the Greek system at UT is an amazing part of the university, and will stick with you for your entire life.

Ok, so a little more nit-picking...sorry :p

Not all Texas schools require full length shots. UTEP doesn't (but that is probably because we only have 2 NPC sororities).

I hope your not saying that El Paso is not a big city. Because just because we are in the middle of nowhere (which we are. PS. We are still closer to San Diego than we are to Austin/Dallas/Houston) doesn't mean we aren't a big city.

Unless they changed something (and they really should with all the girls who go through), I don't recall Baylor requiring full-length shots. If they do, that's something new.

Thank you, tx427 for your positive comments. It's nice to have a confirmation, from a collegian, that when it comes right down to it, the women at your campus are, after all, just like most other NPC women, a bunch of nice, bright and normal students!

In any case, I have another question (and my reason for reading this thread.) I know a young woman who recently and unexpectedly moved to TX with her family due to a job change. She's now deciding which school among several to attend. Since I know her personally, I'll write her a reference for GPB, but she'll need some help getting recs for other groups. If she sends her info to her area Alum Panhel, and they farm out her info to other groups. will it hurt her that those references will be pretty much "info only" recs? I'd feel really bad if I told her to send her info, and somebody else gave her a reference with a low score just because she doesn't know anyone. Would she be better off just to submit her application to her college panhellnic and just go for it on her own?

By "recently and unexpectedly" do you mean within the last year / year and a half / two years? (I'm guessing that you do.)

What do the TX alumnae and actives on GC suggest? I'm wondering if you could suggest to the young woman that she try contacting family friends, former teachers, church / synagogue members from her previous home town to get recs? They'd be able, I hope, to write them from a know-her-personally perspective. At the same time it probably wouldn't hurt to go through her Area Alum Panhellenic, too. After all, it's very possible that the local alumnae associations could contact alums in her previous home town to get a comfortable amount of info for a decent rec.

I kind of get the impression that at some schools and/or chapters in TX she'd be better off with even an info-only rec than none at all.

bejazd, if she is in highschool in Texas now, she has made friends whose moms might have been in sororities, or she has teachers, etc. Last year, I got calls from girls that were friends of my son's, that I hadn't met, asking if I would write a rec or letter of support. I asked them to bring their stuff by and give me a chance to talk to them. I didn't have a problem with writing on behalf of them, although I did want to meet them first. That might be a way for your friend to get her recs.:)

Local alumni assoc's can help, but she might try the above first.

As someone who went to college in Texas, I would say that srmom and exlurker have given you some great advice. I did not attend UT, but I did attend a school with a competitive rush.

An info only rec is better than no rec.

A rec by someone who knows you is better than an info only rec.

Letters, while not required, help in some chapters. However, PNMs with info only recs get placed in chapters every year.

The suggestion to pursue both friends of the family and the local aph is a good one. Covers all bases for those chapters that may want a personal rec.

Some sororities "suggest" that references should go through the Reference Boards in the town where she lives. We get many out of town references for girls living in our town come through our reference board each year from women who have known these young ladies personally. Letters of support as well. This is seen as a courtesy to us and helps us list of references in order. It also introduces us to the new "girls" in town.

But as blondie93 has said info only is better than no rec. I also ditto srmom. Pursue all your options. I also know on some HS campuses, counselors have information.

co-sign what Blondie & srmom said. Very good advice. I'm an alumnae chapter pres in Texas and my small chapter has members in 3 separate alumnae panhellenic groups. We deal with a bunch of high schools and there are always new girls who have just moved. Our panhellenics want all of the girls to feel comfortable, have a good Recruitment/Rush and find their home.

A friend of mine who is an admissions recruiter calls the high schools in my suburb "ranker tankers". Someone can make straight A's their entire academic career and still not make top 10% in their class. My son would love to go to UT someday but he is a B student so even though he is only in 8th grade, we've told him to start looking elsewhere.

Rumor has it that THE University of Texas in Austin was originally called Texas University hence the "TU". It is supposed to be an insult when Aggies call it "TU" but I figure they either didn't get the memo or are just really slow to change.

Thank you, ladies, I can see this may be an uphill battle but hopefully not impossible. I feel for her because I can imagine that it's tough for the new kid (and a HS senior) to approach people you've just met or hardly know and ask questions that might seem sorta pushy or nosy in order to get a personal reference....she'll just have to get out her comfort zone and do it if this is important to her! All part of the learning process I suppose.

bejazd, tell her to start with her new friends' moms, they should be the least intimidating. After she's got "her legs under her", she can move on to teachers, etc.

The thing is, most of the women she will be approaching have been there before, or have worked with girls who have, so they will only be wanting the best for her, and will be happy to do what they can to help with recruitment. I honestly have never run across anyone who said, "nope, can't help her." when I've called someone on behalf of a girl I've known. I've never turned a girl down who needed a rec - even when I've been at my busiest.

Good luck to her!!!

bejazed have her ask the people who are writing you recs if they know anyone else. I remember my daughtr asking someone and then another person over hearing and saying I will write you a rec too. Tehn she found out they didn't have they chapter at her school be she proceed to tell her 3 other people who could write her rec.

I've lived in Texas my entire life and have visited every part of the state and have never heard of anyone not refer to the University of Texas as "Texas" or "UT". We are the only UT. If you go to UT-Arlington, you don't say "I go to UT".

Hook 'Em.

Co-sign. Except that I did not attend UT, and I now live in another state. However, even at my non-UT school everyone refers to the school in Austin as UT or Texas.

Ep- a word of caution... it appears that you are still in school... as you begin the resume/interview process, you *really* need to refer to the school that you attend at UTEP and not UT. That could really cause some potential employers to raise an eyebrow.

And while we are it, the "university system" is not a concept unique to Texas- in fact, I believe that most if not all states have the same set-up. However, when athletic teams take the field, the "main" campus (e.g. Austin, Knoxville, Lincoln, Norman) has just the state name on their jerseys, whereas all the "system" schools always have the full inital thing.

I am pleased with living in the South.

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I may have missed some of the nuances of the argument, but I just wanted to try to point something out:

Even at the schools where recommendations from alumnae or alumnae groups matter a lot, the active undergraduate members still vote according to the national guidelines for membership selection, as far as I know.

So any claims of "alumnae choosing the membership" are greatly exaggerated as far as I know.

I can see why who you were in high school or in your home town might seem like a lame consideration in joining an organization in college, to me it seems a little better to at least to have a little information about that rather than to base a lifelong membership decision on the couple of conversations that you might have had during recruitment or, at the most, a semester's worth of interaction on campus if rush is delayed or deferred.

So, while I generally hope undergraduate members still use their own judgment in selecting members (my goofy feelings about legacies aside), the alumnae are really just trying to provide a benefit to the PNMs and the chapters.

As far as the photos, I know that when you are trying to place someone that you think you know by name, a photo is often really helpful. The more images you've got of a girl the more likely it is that someone is going to say, "oh, yeah, I know her; she worked with my daughter's girl scout group," or whatever. If it's the alumnae groups asking for the photos, it may not be about making sure to the shuffle out all the fat girls. In my experience, the alumnae are much more concerned about character than appearance.

I wrote a really inflammatory post and I didn't feel like dealing with whining and bitching so I edited it.

Not to sound rude or anything....but i'm not stupid.

I wish we had had this during my recruitment years...it would have helped conversations between PNMs and actives that have significant height differences. I can still see some of the photos in my mind of women who walked in the door on Open House day and no one was able to recognize them.

We used to get these huge packages with the full-length pics for the Texas girls back when I was in undergrad (can I say that?). We were happy to get them as recs are moderately common at W&L, but the Texas packets were definitely the most intense...

I can think of one girl who had a beautiful face but her full-length... Wow. I think that is a rush story I just can't tell. Although I SO WANT TO.

And yeah... UT is UT is UT is.... Texas.

I was the senior homeroom teacher at a private school in Houston. I had a white erase board with all the students' names, and I would write their college acceptances on the board. One student was accepted to UTSA, so I dutifully wrote "UTSA" by his name. He kept erasing the "SA", which irritated his fellow classmates, so finally they drew Shamu (there is a Sea World in San Antonio) by his name.

Oh, do tell. PLEASEEEEE (said in my best whining voice).:D

I agree UT is in Austin. I am from Houston and have lived in Texas all my life until I went to school in Tenn. When anyone I know says UT or Texas they are talking about the one in Austin. If they go to the UT in Dallas then it is UTD or the one it San Antonio its UTSA. I mean even those schools websites call themselves UTD and UTSA. If you are applying for a job and you put down UT please mean the one in Austin. Not that UTSA or UTD arent good schools but lets be honest UT is much harder to get accepted into then the other two I mean they defer acceptance of students to attend those other schools.

Co-sign!

UTA is UT-Arlington, UTD is UT-Dallas, UTSA is UT-San Antonio, and then there's UT-Austin.

Seriously... people try to hide it all the time, but it's kind of silly.

Did her photo show her wearing a pink beaded dress, pink tights with sequins up the back and pink high heel shoes? Just curious.

http://qopt.phys.msu.su/pasha/smiles.../diablotin.gif

I just choked on my diet coke, I laughed so hard!!!!!!! :p


(srmom, I love your attitude about helping women navigate recruitment-- thanks for doing that!)

I'm still waiting to hear how that recruitment worked out;) - is she as happy as her twin?

Thanks, Katmandu!

No, no it did not!

Speaking of Texas recruitment and roundup etc., I saw a bunch of Texas sorority members wandering around West Campus completely trashed today around 9:45 AM. :rolleyes:

Oh to throw more into the flames. There is UT Health Science Center in San Antonio and Houston and UTMB. Which stands for UT Medical Branch in Galveston and is the med school. No one would ever confuse UTMB with Southwestern which is the name for UT Medical school in Dallas.

There's been so much talk lately about them starting a UT medical school that would be in Austin and a direct college within UT Austin. I think there's too much opposition for that to happen though. I personally don't know how much there is a need for it in the first place.

Speaking of public schools in Texas, did anyone see the recent thing where the legislature wants to consider starting a "third flagship public school"? I guess the idea is partially to take some of the strain off UT & A&M because of the 10% rule (well especially A&M). I don't get this idea. I thought that they were grooming Tech to take the "third flagship" role anyway and that it was already edging that way in the first place or even already there. And I also don't see why they would spend millions and millions of dollars into an entirely new school when they could use the money to build up places like Tech or even Texas State, where the basic infrastructure already exists. It's weird to me and I don't quite understand where the lobby for this is coming from.

It took me a long time to figure out in the first place that all the schools are part of different systems... In North Carolina every state school is technically part of the "UNC system" even if they don't have "UNC" in their name.

The 10% rule needs to be eliminated anyway. The population has grown so much; I'm pretty sure that's why UT had to introduce the CAP program.

To be honest, I never liked the 10% rule because the 'top 10%' of a high school class could vary from one school to another.

That's the reason I liked the 10% rule, it gave students from "less fortunate" school districts a chance to go to a good college.

Lets be honest---I was in the top 10% and I think i'm darn smart (along with the other 28 people who were in the top 10% w/ me) but I don't know if we could compete with people at more fortunate school districts in Austin, Dallas, etc.

But I know that when my cousin was a senior in HS (which was 2 years ago) the counselors told the seniors that they would no longer be accepted because they were top 10% that it was taken away.

Well the medical school in Houston is SOOOOOOO crowded and so hard to get into. What gets me mad about this idea, is that there have been plans for soo long to start medical schools in other places (Like El Paso) and the buildings were built and then the board, or whoever is in charge, kept taking away the funding. The medical school should have been opened in Fall '07 or fall '08 (i should have been part of the first class).

I know a lot of people got upset here, because the person who they put in charge of the medical school hired some AWESOME doctors from around the country---very well respected doctors in their field. Then he was fired and the doctors were told that if they came to El Paso they wouldn't have a job.

The reason the funding was taken away? Because they didn't think El Paso was "worthy" of having a medical school.....they wanted the med school in Austin or some place "better." I know El Paso isn't Austin, but I don't think its a bad place and we are a unique city. The medical school would benefit b/c they would see problems here that you wouldn't really see elsewhere.

Now we were told we got funding again, so we'll see what happens.

UT hates the 10% rule. Right now they're admitting something like 81% of freshmen based on the ten percent rule. For A&M the number is much lower, so A&M isn't as worried about it:

http://media.www.dailytexanonline.co...-3279783.shtml

Personally, I see some good and bad to the top 10% rule. As a graduate student who's really interested in having UT increase its profile among Research 1 institutions, having the rule prevents UT from keeping enrollment down, forcing them to spend more and more on undergrads and preventing them from sending money to research and to grad students. At the same time, I don't blame Texas high school grads for going to UT over other schools (including A&M, bwa hahahaha).

I just don't know what other solution they're going to come up with to remedy it. I guess the idea of the third flagship school is maybe part of it--starting from scratch and presenting an alternative to people who maybe wouldn't go to Tech or A&M over UT but would be interested in starting something new from a blank slate? I am just skeptical about whether that would really work.

One thing batted around is switching it to the fact that if you were in the top 10%, you'd be admitted to *some* Texas state school. But it seems like that would required a lot of coordination/bureaucracy between admission offices.

It's true that at really good schools in Dallas, Houston, Austin, etc., that most of the graduating student body is probably qualified to enter UT. At the same time the University is supposed to serve the entire state, not people who happen to live in a rich school district (let's face it, good school districts are often rich ones).

In my time as an instructor I've only met one person who was admitted under the top 10% rule who seemed blatantly unqualified to attend UT. I think overall the quality of the student body is pretty high. I know they're aren't as intellectually motivated as the students I knew in undergrad, but I think that's partly something to do with the state university/liberal art college divide.

Sucks about the El Paso situation. I haven't been following it. I don't really have a strong opinion on a med school in Austin. People from other UT med schools can do their residencies at Austin hospitals anyway. I actually think UT is somewhat indifferent to the whole thing overall. Administrators are concerned about the startup costs taking away from other institutional goals. I know people involved in biology/biomedical engineering really want a med school because it would allow a lot of cross-pollination in terms of research opportunities, grant funding, etc.

Sorry to keep going back to the "third flagship" proposal but that was another thing that somewhat irked me about the proposal. It seemed a way to excuse not funding or building up schools like Tech or UTEP in under-served areas of the state in exchange for building a new school closer to the Texas population centers.

EVEN Texas State? :p Did you know that admissions requirements for TX State are now higher than Tech? I love my alma mater, and would really like to see it get the funding it needs to be even greater. From a population standpoint, it is pretty well perfectly situated - 1 hour from San Antonio, 30 minutes (okay, 45 with traffic) from Austin, 2 1/2 - 3 and from Houston (depends where in Houston you are talking).

The lobby for this is coming from those who would profit from a new school. But I don't really see this coming to anything - not in this economy. It would cost far too much to start from scratch. And I'm sorry UTEP is still not gettin' any love - they really have been the red-haired step child for quite a while.

Oh man - didn't mean to imply anything against State. I guess I said that because I think that it's good to develop schools outside of Central Texas as well (as I posted above). But there's also an argument to be made that for the many people who want to stay in the Central Texas area Texas State really needs to be built up and funded properly. But yeah, even if there WERE the money to create a new school, I think it would be a stupid idea to do so and that it should be instead poured into the schools that are on the verge of reaching Research 1 status like Texas State, Tech, maybe UTEP... There could be others. I'm admittedly no expert on public universities in Texas.

One thing I've thought a lot about both in my home state of NC and in Texas is whether or not have the extra letters behind your name inherently regulates you to second class status. I'm thinking of UTEP, UTSA, UTA, UNC-C, etc. etc. I mean I know that's why so many schools are renaming themselves as Texas State did. I'm trying to think of schools that I think of as "elite" that have letters after their name. I guess UCLA is up there for sure. There may be others...

I thought Tech was pretty much on the way to being the 3rd flagship school since they already have a law school as well as a medical school up and running to service West Texas population.

These are both true, and its sad, but I do see it changing any time soon. It is most logical to use Tech, Texas State or another school more centrally located, it gives students a chance to have a good "college experience" outside of classes. El Paso has had MANY chances to bring great attractions and great opportunities to El Paso, but we've had lousy administration who wanted to "keep El Paso Local" So instead, we are stuck w/o a 6 flags, and instead of a Dallas Cowboys training camp, we got lousy overpriced housing.

As much as I love my city, we've pretty much shot ourself in the foot and we no one to blame but ourselves.

I have no idea what a research 1 satus school is, but I could have sworn I heard that UTEP is one. I know that we have a great engineering program and a great nursing program.

I totally agree on your second point! After H.S. graduation I went to UTEP, not because I wanted to but it was my only option, and my "best friend" went to UPenn. All of a sudden her mentality changed and she was always started off her statements "as a freshman at an ivy league college", and she always tell me that I didn't understand her b/c I went to UTEP and not UT (which is supposedly closer to the "UPenn experience"). All I have to say is :rolleyes:

I see it this way, UTEP might not be up to par with UT or A&M, but when you get out in the real world, you have to rely on what you learned and not rely on the name of your alma mater.