University of Wisconsin-Madison Sorority Recruitment
 

2012 Sorority Recruitment at UW-Madison begins today!

According to www.uwgreek.org, there are 11 NPC and 3 affiliate sororities on campus. GoGreek info sessions were held Wednesday, Aug 29, and Registration closes today at 12 noon. Formal recruitment schedule:

Orientation: Friday, Aug. 31
First Round: Sunday, Sept. 2 (visit all chapters)
Second Round: Monday, Sept. 3 (return to up to 7 chapters)
Pref Round: Friday, Sept. 7 (return to up to 3 chapters)
Bid Day: Sunday, Sept. 9, 10:30am

No word from my sources yet on #PNMs registered to date.

Best wishes to all chapters! Would love to hear stories from PNMs, alums, actives, or moms/dads!

What are affiliate sororities?

Mine either. I'm dying to know. :) I have done recommendations for 3 girls but haven't heard from them yet.

My sister is a senior this year so she's so over recruitment. The only texts I get are ones stating she's annoyed with how long work week is and sick of facebook rules.


Second this!


My chapter (Alpha Omega Epsilon) is an affiliate sorority. It's an associate member, or a member of a non-NPC group that is a Panhellenic Member.

GO BADGERS!

I wasn't sure what "affiliate sororities" meant either, but following are the NPC organizations:

Alpha Chi Omega
Alpha Epsilon Phi
Alpha Phi
Chi Omega
Delta Delta Delta
Delta Gamma
Gamma Phi Beta
Kappa Alpha Theta
Kappa Kappa Gamma
Pi Beta Phi
Sigma Delta Tau

That must mean the other mentioned are the affliates:

Alpha Omega Epsilon (as AOEforme mentioned above)
Gamma Alpha Omega
Sigma Alpha Omega

Best to all! Go Badgers!

Wish AGD was still there...I might go visit my bro in law more, lol. (Actually only been 1 in the 20+ years he's lived there.)

Neat city.

I think if Wisconsin decided to expand, there would be a BIG fight for some sororities to get back there.

No doubt.I would love to see a recolonization of our Nu chapter!!

My daughter is an active in one of the houses there. They are very tired from long days of practice, FB and Twitter restrictions, and ready for rush to start! :)

My daughter is also in a house at Madison and is more than ready for recruitment to begin. According to her, "we can only practice for so long."

Not to mention, this is where they want to be on Labor Day Weekend!:D

http://www.google.com/url?source=img...I4t_QleSUcjKSg

As an alum, I'm so excited to hear any information re:Wisconsin that anyone has to offer. I still have a few connections in the Greek system there, so I'll post anything that I can find out (within reason, of course).

I also would love for expansion to take place. Quota has steadily risen since the 90's, and I really think Wisconsin could support another sorority. I believe that the last two houses to leave campus were AXiD and AGD. AXiD was in the mid '90's and due to membership numbers (I've been told); not sure about Alpha Gam. At one time, Wisconsin also had KD, Phi Sigma Sigma, Theta Phi Alpha, AOPi, ADPi, DZ, Sigma Kappa and Phi Mu.

From what I understand, there is one group who is under total and who does not want to be at total. Would this hinder expansion?

No.

I don't think so. I know the group of which you're speaking, and I don't think it would be a problem. They are very selective in their membership, and don't own a physical house on campus by choice. It seems to work for them; they seem to have a strong sisterhood. I think expansion wouldn't effect them really.

Is this what they call "the terrace?"

Yes. :D

Yes, the Terrace refers to the Memorial Union Terrace. The Memorial Union dates from 1928, and the back terrace opens to Lake Mendota. There are colorful "sunburst" chairs by the hundreds, and it is THE gathering spot for students, alums, visitors and residents alike. The Union itself features, among a million other things, homemade Wisconsin ice cream and Der Rathskellar (think German beer hall with pub food). Pitchers of beer from the Rathskellar on the Terrace are a favorite, plus sailing, plus swimming, plus lakeside movies, summer stage with live music 5 nights a week. It's pretty awesome.

Here's another view, this time of the back of the Union, from Lake Mendota:
http://photos.uc.wisc.edu/photos/105...jpg?1286762668

I'm curious, do the affiliate sororities participate along with the NPC sororities during recruitment? (No offense, but personally I would think the benefits of an NPC sorority are greater especially in the long run and post graduation) Are the girls required to attend parties for all sororities? Or can you opt out of the non-npc sororities?

As far as I know, the affiliate sororities do not participate in FR. AOEforme would have better info. Didn't your chapter participate in round one (or maybe tabling?) at one point?

But the number you've all been waiting for is 786. That's how many women are currently registered. It's up over 10% from last year (and quota was 48 then).
Parties start Sunday! :D

Except those two piers are no more :( The swim one was pulled out about 2 weeks ago and the concrete one is blocked off. They're doing serious remodeling around the union so the terrace space is decreased by about half. Oh well. We'll make do. We're happy we still have plenty of beverages ;) and a bit of a view of the lake.

My chapter opted to not participate in formal, because it's difficult for our membership selection process to be adapted to formal recruitment. Some chapters of Alpha Omega Epsilon choose to participate in formal, but we have opted to always participate in select rounds (like kchaptergphib said).

aside/ In terms of the long term benefits of an NPC, Alpha Ep has very similar programming. We have really active national alumnae organizations, alumnae chapters, social groups, scholarship programs, conventions, etc. I've noted my alumna experience to be near identical to that of my friends in NPCs, except that the science concentration persists. The only thing I have noted is that my sorority is not as well known as my friends in Chi Omega or Delta Gamma (for instance).

Basically, what I am saying is that non-NPC is not the same as a local sorority. Even in that instance, a local may still have amazing programs for graduates.

Wow! That's amazing. Any word from the first days of recruitment?

Another aside: I miss the terrace. Horribly.

OMG...this needs a huge like!!!

My daughter's had very little time to fill me in (she's an active). She said first round Sunday went really well, lots of great girls, but a super long day and didn't finish up til 2am. Then right back at the house Monday at 11am getting ready for 2nd round. Now they start school and try to focus on that and they're excited to see who comes back for pref on Friday!

At Convention in 2010 my friend who is a UW alum joked with the UW collegians: "Have one on the terrace for me!" and they all laughed. So, I figured this might be the iconic spot. Thanks for enlightening me, UW friends! :)

Can't wait to hear more about Wisconsin recruitment.. Love the campus there.

I wish so, too. It's our Beta chapter. And Madison is indeed a great city.
And AGDLynn could come to visit me en route!:D

I'm going up for the Illinois-Wisconsin football game in a couple of weeks and can't wait. I always have so much fun in Madison. But I have learned the hard way to pace myself on gameday, especially at my "mature" age.

Not sure who to root for - Illinois grad with a Wisconsin kid!

Good luck to all the houses and PNMs with Pref tonight and Bid Day Sunday!

@ILAnchorGirl:

That's funny. My mom is a UW grad and my dad is a UIUC grad. When I was little, we'd always go to the Badger/Illini game at Camp Randall each year. My dad always made sure I was wearing navy and orange. LOL But, now that I'm a Wisconsin grad, I only cheer for the Badgers, of course. ;-)

By the way, the only thing I've really heard about rush this year is that it's going pretty well. Oh, and that there seems to be a lot of sophomores (many of whom are transfers) rushing this year. Looking forward to hearing about pref tonight and bid day on Sunday!

I'm outnumbered in my family. My husband went to UW (Fiji) and now my daughter. My uncle (Delta Upsilon) was the captain of the UW basketball team in the 50s. I'll admit I've become quite a Badger fan, but it will be hard for me to root against my own alma mater. Illinois football hasn't been too impressive of late (almost a complete reversal of the beatings they used to give the Badgers in my day), so I'm just hoping for a competitive game. ;)

That's interesting, I hadn't head that about the number of sophs going through. This is purely anecdotal, I don't have any stats to back it up, but it seems like Greek Life at UW has a high percentage of out of staters (e.g., "Coasties" LOL) participating, compared to the overall percentage at UW overall. Is that true? My hope is that it would be a good mix of kids from both and and out of state and not a divisive thing. Just curious.

This is SO far off from the truth!

I went to a very large suburban Chicago high school with a graduating class of over 600. At least 20 people from my class went to UW-Madison and many of them went through recruitment. There were also plenty of girls from years before us that were already in chapters. Many of the girls who went to UW-Madison were friends and they went through recruitment together. They didn't all join the same chapter, but a lot did. It also happened to be a chapter where a number of girls from our HS were already members.

This same scenario is quite common when looking at a number of the suburban Chicago schools.

Also please realize that there are a TON of Badger alums in the Chicago area. A number of my 'not rich' friends went to UW-Madison because it's where their parents went and where they had a family tradition. One of my friends worked 2 work study jobs and got a large outside scholarship, without which she could never have afforded to attend.

Please don't assume that because kids are OOS that they are all well-off. Yes, they pay more to attend than someone in-state, but that doesn't mean they are 'well-off'. Some of their parents put away money so they could attend college anywhere they wanted, even if that meant living a more simple life.

It depends on how you look at out of state, too. I went to a different college in Wisconsin, but the majority of the students were from WI or neighboring states- Minnesota, Illinois, and Indiana mostly. There were like three of us in my class of ~400 from the Seattle area, maybe a dozen from the west coast states. So there were a lot of out of staters- but most were still in drive-home-for-the-weekend distance.

Yeah, I'd have trouble calling Chicago suburbs oos for Wisconsin. Although it's technically true, it is closer to Madison than Champaign. It's just really not the same as the kids coming in from New York or California. The Chicago kids are going to have friends, family, familiarity with the campus, the city, the culture, etc. and not feel out there on their own, like the REALLY out of staters.

There's A LOT of students from New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Florida and California. And most of them choose to rush. But there are also a lot of girls from Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota that rush as well. As a rule of thumb, I would say that OOS students (and that includes Illinois and Minnesota) are more likely to go through recruitment than Wisconsin students. I'm from Wisconsin originally, and that was definitely true of my experience being greek at Wisconsin. All of the sororities on campus have members from all over the United States, but each attracts women from certain regions more than others. I'm not sure if I worded that correctly...Does that make sense?

Makes sense to me! My chapter had a large percentage of west coasters compared to the other groups. It's similar to having a group of swimmers, runners, or musicians- like often attracts like, to a point.

At Wisconsin, if you only have one house for pref are you guaranteed a bid to that house?

Guaranteed is a strong word but you are highly likely to receive a bid to that one house. There are exceptions (the chapter finds out something horrible about you between inviting you to preference and ending preference that makes them desperately not want you), but one can assume you will be placed in that chapter.

I was an advisor for our chapter at UW and I would agree that it seems like most of the girls going through recruitment are from out of state. This includes the Chicago suburbs. When I was advising, our chapter had girls from all over the US, but didn't seem to have many from WI. K, the Gamma Phi advisor, who, if she is who I think she is, can give better insight since she's from WI originally and is in the trenches right now. UW is a land-grant school that has a lot of students from small towns where there is not a tradition of Greek life. Girls from the coasts, Chicago, and the Twin Cities are usually more familiar with Greek Life because they have friends already at UW or at other schools with vibrant Greek communities.

It is pretty much the same at U of Iowa too...