You are not getting into any sorority with bad or mediocre grades.
 

@KSUViolet06 - best PSA about grades I've seen.

Wish this board had a "like" button!

I don't want to step on the Greek Life mods' toes, but I'd sticky this one.

Absolutely dead on target!

*** applause ***

Very well put.

... but my super special snowflake got a hangnail in her freshman year and her GPA is now 2.8. That's almost good enough, right? I heard that the football team's recommendation for her will override the grade requirement. She's very popular with the football team...

Totally agree, but...what do we tell PNMs who are accepted to certain schools with mediocre GPAs but want to go through recruitment there? At my alma mater, for example, grades are not an issue because you have to have great grades to get in. But I get rec requests for a few schools with very competitive recruitments and the PNMs got accepted to these schools with less than stellar GPAs--one gal had a 2.95 and no good "excuse" for it. Sure, you got in, but you're going to be very limited because your GPA is not good. Some of these PNMs are getting SCHOLARSHIPS to these schools with these less than stellar GPAs, but they're already going to be ruled out by certain chapters because of the same GPAs. It's very hard to reconcile that.

Oh my word where is the rolling crying emoji when you need it?

And preach it. All truth.

As for schools with higher admit GPAs: there are some chapters who then focus on PNMs with scholarships or who are in the Honors College. GPAs follow you everywhere.

This is when you remind them that sororities have a much stronger academic focus than comes across in popular culture and are not just about living in a pretty house and partying. It would be nice if that was conveyed in more of the recruitment videos that are all over YouTube.

Oh my goodness, yes.

Recruitment videos on YouTube make me laugh. The ones where fraternities mock sorority recruitment videos make me laugh harder.

A Taylor Swift song plays over a video of women blowing glitter around and frolicking on the beach, and then we wonder why PNMs think they can skirt by with a less-than-steller GPA.

Could.not agree more. If you only saw these videos, you'd think sorority women did nothing but play and party, looking fabulous all the while.

Did you see the mock video done by the Vanderbilt football team? One of the best I've seen!

I try...but as we all know, some 18 year olds are a little more drawn to cute boys than books. ;)

I just need to get over the fact that a 3.0 at a mediocre high school will get you a scholarship to a flagship university. But there's probably some website somewhere else to discuss that...

There's this...

http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/sh...d.php?t=134651

Everybody is the best! ;)

Those recruitment videos may look ridiculous for graduates of almost every age and gender, but we're not who they're targeting. For 17 and 18 year old women, videos that show fun, put together and well dressed girls doing cool things (yachts! music festivals! pools! running on the football field!) is wayyyyyy more of a draw than studying in the library or conducting chapter meetings. Keep in mind they're coming from high school, and only the absolute richest girls have had access to these types of events with their friends before (and they're going to want to keep at least the status quo anyway). They're wildly exciting to that age group and that's why chapters are spending so much money on them. You're kidding yourself if you think otherwise.

Perhaps that's the case. But then we can't be surprised when PNMs believe that their GPA isn't going to be a huge factor going into recruitment.

And I don't think you give 17- and 18-year-old women enough credit. To think that all of them are simply drawn in by pretty houses and glitter is not accurate.

I'm not saying you have to show a video of women in the library studying, but why, instead of running around aimlessly with a meaningless song playing, do we not talk about the benefits of membership? The importance of scholarship? The friendships? The lifelong connections? The opportunity to give back to the community? Heck, you can even talk about and show your amazing house and the social events you hold, all while hanging out by the pool. But a good number of recruitment videos are expensive, trivial recordings that portray nothing of substance.

The Alpha Xi Delta chapter at the University of Washington did a GREAT video a year ago and it is being replicated by some of our other chapters. It's a great "letter" from the outgoing president to the new members about what sisterhood means. It's very emotional and heart-felt with little to no hair flipping or bimbo'y clothes. I'd love to see more chapters talk about that part of sorority membership and less beating you over the head with less than subtle sexual references.

If we are afraid that anything but images of pretty girls in bikinis is going to scare women away from sorority membership, perhaps we're targeting the wrong women.

And (I can't believe this is coming out of my mouth) perhaps the advisors and national headquarters, either or both of whom I'm guessing have to approve the astronomical budgets for these productions, need to rethink the type of member this is attracting as well.

I'm not saying we should talk about nothing but grades and studying, but occasionally the disconnect is large enough to incite whiplash.

Sadly, women are a big part of the anti-feminism problem. We COULD be a big part of the solution, but that all goes back to the same arguments of sorority women understanding and using their power. When sorority women start telling d-bag fraternities where they can shove their mixers, they can start thinking about not making bimbo videos.

My FarmVille 4 sister is RIGHT ON the money(as are my other Panhellenic sisters and our IFC brother). I would add a caveat, that while you might qualify with your low GPA to sign up for recruitment, that in no way means you will meet individual sororities GPA requirement, which are, most often, higher.

True! I've known of several girls whom Panhellenic allowed to rush even though they had under a 2.5 as freshmen. They were so happy that they were going to get to rush and then they were cut across the board after first parties. And of course, PH got to keep the fees.

Do sororities take into account your major when looking at GPA? I'm a sophomore biology major and I have to say the upper level math, chemistry & biology classes I'm taking are significantly harder than a lot of other majors. I have gotten ONE C on my transcript and I have 3.23. The rest are all A's and B's. I'm working really hard and I get good grades but I know my GPA is still mediocre.

They don't see your transcript once you have a semester of college credits. So all they would know is your GPA. Some might take a look at your major; some won't. And even for the vast majority of incoming freshmen, they won't see your HS transcript and only go by the HS GPA that the university accepts from your core subjects. Most of the schools I have worked with give the chapters your official GPA- not the one with cheerleading,etc included.

The requirement for each group to bid is simply a number. Where you rank within the list of those above that number is a different story and is dependent on grades,activities, recommendations and other things. In other words, the whole package.

No. Unfortunately they do not see all of that.

I'm sorry, but this whole "I'm in a more difficult major than you" thing annoys me. I was an engineering major to start, and I realized that calculus wasn't something I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I graduated with a Poli Sci degree with a focus on law. I wrote so many papers as an undergrad, including a 60-page study on politics, the media, and the effect that each has on each other. Meanwhile, I knew Engineering and Math majors who couldn't spell or write to save their life. But their GPA should be weighted more heavily because they're in a "difficult" major? Please.

I know that part of this is a product of high school students not being advised adequately and ending up in majors they were never meant to be in, but to argue that certain people should get a pass because of their major is ridiculous.

They care so much about GPA for several very important reasons. A very big issue is whether a girl will bring the average GPA for the chapter UP or DOWN.

Chapters are critically evaluated against campus ASA (all sorority average) or all Greek average. How many 4.0 GPAs are needed to lift a 2.5 up to that number? LOTS. If a chapter does not meet or exceed ASA, they may face some disciplinary action. The GPA numbers are not weighted because a chapter has a bunch of pre-med or calculus majors.

In defenses of that argument, I had elementary ed major friends who complained about all the reading they had to do, of Dr. Seuss books, when I had to read 17 novels in 1 semester, including The Executioner's Song. You have to weight train just to lift that sucker. And my nursing and pre-med friends had to memorize, oh, you know, every bone in the human body. While I don't think GPAs of majors should be weighted (because if you're in it you should have the talent for it), but some college IS harder than others.

I don't think people should get a pass for their major, but I think there should be understanding. Objectively, my engineering friends had more involved, more difficult work than I did as a sociology major. Their GPA matched against mine was more impressive knowing the work they did was more time-intensive and more rigorous than the work I did. My major was the major athletes got placed in to stay academically eligible, which I know because I tutored a whole lot of them who needed it even though their classes were easy. Football players don't get put in engineering courses to keep them on the team.

We had to be reminded during recruitment that if a PNM told us she was in engineering or the Honors college not to wow and awe at her or tell her "that's such a hard major!" because it was incredibly awkward to be on the receiving end of that (which I experienced more than once when I mentioned being in our Honors college). While I hated when engineering majors acted as though they were somehow better than non-STEM majors because they survived their classes, I acknowledge that not all majors are created equal.

That said, I think there should still be a minimum PNMs have to clear regardless of major, and then what that major was can be considered afterwards.

Then of course there's the issue of quality of preparation. My stepmom taught an intro chemistry class that was required for pre-med students at her college. The class was full of kids who got As in "honors" science classes in high school. They could barely balance equations---and were stunned when she told them that they may want to think about some other route than medical school. So I guess it goes both ways.

But I agree about the "harder major" thing. No way my engineering roommates could've written the papers I wrote about Congress...and no way would I want to do all the math they did! :D

Look also at when the "difficult" classes are taken. An engineering major who is barely prepared will probably have to bust butt freshman and sophomore years to internalize the heavy mathematics required for further experience, where a social-science or humanities major likely is expected to start small and work toward the thesis-level, in-depth research projects with heavy research and book-length reports An instrumentl music major likely has to start out strong and add time in rehearsal as s/he progresses. Choosing how to weight programs without factoring innate abilities, program timing, and individual perspective is useless, and factoring them all is impossible.

I work in higher ed admissions and YES to all of this. If your major is "more difficult", it may not be the major for you. And, while many students believe that they need to be in these "harder" majors to prepare for graduate school, that is simply not the case.

Cheers to academic advisors that actually advise students on an individual basis, instead of a "standard recommended curriculum" which should be acting as a guide, instead of as the law of the land.

You're right, they are doing more than reading Dr. Seuss.

True story: Late one night during my junior year, I was leaving the Architecture building* with my study buddy from a long night of studying for our biochem exam.

We ran into a friend of my study buddy who was looking tired too. We asked her what she was doing and she said that she was designing a bulletin board. I started laughing like crazy because I though she was kidding. She was not. She explained that she was an Elementary Ed major and that was one of her classes, bulletin board design.

So yeah, she spent a semester learning how to design a bulletin board and I spent mine working out Michaelis-Menten equations.

* The Architecture building was the best place for late night study because it was always open and if you got tired there were a few funky couches you could nap on if you were willing to overlook the odd stains......

All I can tell you is I was reading heavy duty literature in the 1000 pages range per book and they were literally sitting there with books aimed at 6 year olds and complaining that they had the same amount of reading to do as I did. I'm not saying the work isn't important. I AM saying that the reading they were complaining about wasn't on education theory. But then I would also add there was more than one girl in this set who were elementary ed majors and had never worked with children. So yeah, maybe not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier to begin with. They got to student teaching and had a major career re-think. Because who knew? Little kids are hard.

True, all true.
But every time we insist you have to have more than decent grades, Suze E. Que from Hotflash, AL, whose daddy is the city mayor and owns all the town's convenience and gas stations and whose mama is a Big Donating Alumna from Eta Eta Tittle, the most exclusive sorority on Hotflash State University's campus, gets a bid.
And gives hope to all the other girls with 3.00001 GPAs.

Remember his daughter who DID rush?