Is it bad to ask about costs?
 

When going through recruitment and asking the girls questions about their sorority, is it a bad idea to bring up how much it costs and whether payment plans are available, etc?

Or should a pnm have a plan before going through recruitment to ensure that if she were to receive a bid and join a sorority, she would be able to pay for it one way or another?

If it matters, the school happens to on the list of schools that require letters of recommendations--that's if you're curious

Yes.

What 33 said.

Among the many things sororities look for in a PNM is her ability to assume the financial responsibilities of membership

I have NEVER heard of a sorority going through recruitment week without addressing the subject of dues and how much things cost, that there are payment plans available, etc. They will give you a ball park, to which you will smile, nod, and say, "Oh, yes, that seems quite reasonable" so that they see that you are able to assume that responsibility.

Anyone that tells you that you will be cut for asking how much the dues are or that the sororities won't reveal these vital statistics is LYING TO THEIR PARENTS. Or greviously misinformed. Or both.

I refuse to believe that organizations are holding recruitment without devoting at least 60 SECONDS to the topic of dues and costs prior to giving out bids. It really does them no good not to mention it until Bid Day after they've worked their butts off to recruit you only to have you leave, which forces them to go out and recruit more people? Who they don't reveal the costs to?

So ask your questions and make it clear that you can pay. If you cannot pay and want to get cut, tell them, "Yeah, you should just cut me. I can't afford this. No way, not even if you worked with me on a payment plan that caters to my specific needs. Which every sorority makes every effort to do."

Your choice.

This completely depends on where you go to school. My daughter knows of a girl at a less competitive school that actually has a "financial night" during recruitment. At my daughter's SEC school it is unheard of to discuss finances and according to my daughter it would be very awkward. She said, "I think your bill comes in when you pledge and that's how you find out. Or by word of mouth."

When I was an active, we had to have a poster prominently displayed with the costs during one phase of rush and we specifically had to ask the rushee if she had any questions about the financial aspect. Everyone did this on our campus.

But then a significant portion of our Greek system paid their own way through working. It wasn't financed by mommy and daddy.

Don't ask questions about costs during recruitment. Period.

At a competitive school, (which yours sounds like) that is just awkward. We are told not to talk about finances. If you have a question about them, contact the Greek life office.

Also at some schools your Rho Chis will cover it. I highly doubt that it wouldn't be brought up at some point in rush since it is an important part of your choice to join. The primary reason to not ask is because there is a more than fair chance that the girl you're talking to doesn't have the first clue about the finances and would be put in a situation of having to seek help (difficult since she's not allowed to leave you alone) or make it up which would be bad for both of you. Her third choice is to be really vague and move on. And after she's gone through that series of gymnastics, you are suddenly not her favorite person in the world.

If you are very concerned and by the end of round 2 you don't have answers, ask your Rho Chi. If she doesn't have the information in print, she should be able to get it for you.

This must be a campus culture thing. At my school it would not be weird to talk about costs and members of my chapter are prepared to answer these types of questions. The Rho Chis are also supposed to cover finances in pre-recruitment meetings with PNMs.

If a girl asked me about finances during recruitment, I think that would be a sign of responsibility and that she was taking the decision to join Greek life seriously. I would rather have that happen than have no one ask questions and then depledge/resign membership later for financial reasons.

I think this is the type of thing that is best answered by the Greek Life office, or PHC in general. They're very likely to have that information (and probably even exact details) on hand.

I thought I read somewhere that NPC Formal guidelines required a disclosure of dues during recruitment. I could have dreamed that, though.

From the MOI (Green Book):

Accurate financial information regarding membership is given by Panhellenic in a cost range unless the individual groups provide specific chapter information to you.

Just and FYI to all NPC members, your groups private part of your web site most likely has the NPC MOI on it. That's where I got my copy.

I can't believe at EVERY campus the chapters would not put together a list of costs, doing their utmost best to ensure women could compare and contrast. Surely each one of them could make selling points out of some of their costs - either they cost less, or they include badges, or they cover more meals, or whatever. That's just smart marketing.

Of course, I'm learning that some chapters on some campuses don't want women to make decisions based on anything but superficial things.

UGA makes a pdf handbook available to PNMs (actually it's online, so anyone can see it) and it states the average costs (new member, in house, and member not-in-house dues). I have only been asked once by a PNM what dues were, which we're all required to be able to answer, but I did find it a little strange, given that they were provided with an approximation already.
I could be off base here, but I would think that if someone were looking to join a sorority, new member dues of 1300 vs. 1600 would not make a huge difference in choosing a house. If you're going through recruitment at a big southern school, private school, or any school where where there are a lot of girls for whom finance isn't a concern and might find it an odd question (because they've never had to ask it), I would find out that information outside of the party by calling the greek life office or a sorority office on your own time. There are plenty of girls paying their own way, but you never know the situation and level of understanding of the person you are talking to.

Additionally, you only have a short amount of time to get to know the girl you are talking to; It would be much more beneficial to you to ask questions about the sisterhood and activities of the sorority or show off your personality than to go over numbers and figures.

So are you agreeing with the woman in the other thread who is telling her daughter to cut the more expensive sororities, regardless of whether 1) she likes them and 2) those are the only ones that keep her?

I think what makes that thread so problematic is the huge swings in numbers being thrown about. There is a HUGE difference between $2400 and $4000.

At schools with lower dues, the differences are often lower. I think my chapter's dues were something like $300, and the most expensive chapter was something like $500.

So, I think it's easy to say "find a way to cover the extra $200", but not nearly as easy to say "find a way to come up with the extra $1600".

Is money a stupid basis for choosing a chapter? Sure, but so is the physical house, and how funny the skit is, and a dozen other things that factor into recruitment for women who going in knowing few people.

Oh, I agree. The problem is telling someone they can choose to look at only the "cheap" sororities, as if rush was one-sided. It isn't. You can't walk into your first meeting with your rush group and Rho Chi and say "I only have $2000 a year to spend, so can I just skip the parties of the groups that cost more than that?"

No, just the opposite. I'd never have equated sorority membership with either "if you have to ask you can't afford it" or with "drop the lattes". My experience was so much better than that. But I'm learning from Greek Chat that there are many, many chapters and many, many schools where such trivia is important.

I'm sorry that happens.

In many of those schools the "trivia" includes beautiful houses with fulltime cleaning staffs, cooks, and waiters.

As bizarre as this sounds to me (and to you), when you shake the costs out, it's probably no higher than Ima Independent doing the following:

-renting a student apartment
-eating out constantly because she doesn't cook
-driving from place to place to see her friends because they live faraway at the other end of campus/town
-constantly calling cabs to get to nightspots

As far as clothing, shoes, bags...that has NOTHING to do with sorority membership. The "right bag" etc issue is EVERYWHERE. I'm sure that right now, there is a girl ready to enter some enlightened place like Juniata, standing in Macy's telling her mom that IF SHE DOES NOT HAVE A COACH WRISTLET SHE WILL DIE, ABSOLUTELY DIE. Hell, there's probably some girl getting ready to go to CCAC saying the same thing.

I'm relatively new at this but just to butt my head in, during recruitment at a school without houses (so obviously our dues are not anywhere near what they would be at an SEC school) we PNMs were consistently told that should paying dues be a problem, that no sorority would turn them down and they would be glad to work out a payment plan with a new member and/or look for dues "scholarship" money they said was available. I'm lucky that I never had to look into either of those options, but are those unique to my school? Could you maybe look and see if those options might be available to you too?

My school is definitely not SEC, though we do have houses. I can't say all chapters, but the majority had financial help available be it through payment plans or what have you. We were always encouraged to try for scholarships as well. Our panhellenic council required every chapter to have financial information available to anyone who asked including a board which laid out the costs and the PNM recruitment booklet had the information as well.

Maybe. I never have understood the concept of "cute shoes" and have never owned more than one purse at a time, that I carry with everything. I have never subscribed to, nor read, fashion magazines except to giggle, and don't recognize most of the names that people use to tell recruitment stories. I realize I'm way at one end of the spectrum, but most of the young people I know are way more practical than that.

Thanks!

I wasn't planning on asking as the prices are shown in the recruitment guide book/manual; it was out of pure curiosity since there has not been a recruitment info session yet.

My parents and I are able and willing to pay for whatever costs and I have 3 back up plans in my mind should something happen.

I just became curious after seeing that other thread y'all have mentioned--the one about the mother telling her daughter to "cut" the more expensive sororities.

I'd never purposely try to ruin my recruitment experience based off of money though.