largest "Greek" campuses
 

I am trying to compile a list of the 20 largest "Greek" campuses in the USA. Does anybody know a source for this?

Or, perhaps you could submit your nomination. But to make the list legit I need to know how many greeks are on the campus.

I don't know of any official list, but off the top of my head there's UCLA, U of Florida, (gainesville), and U of Southern California. Anyone else out there?

I've always heard the University of Illinois had the (or one of the)largest membership.

[This message has been edited by BFulton (edited June 13, 2000).]

I think Indiana U and Ohio State also have huge systems.

Percentage-wise, DePauw would have to be one of the top 5. Something like 80% of the students are Greek.

There are several ways to measure how "Greek" a school is, such as number of chapters on campus or highest percentage of student body that is Greek. But I assume we're talking about sheer numbers of Greek students. In that case, I believe BFulton is correct about the University of Illinois.

Penn State has the largest Greek system in the country. 21 out of 26 NPC sororities, 54 fraternities (including multicultural), one 'alternative lifestyle' sorority, one 'alternative lifestyle' fraternity, 8 NPHC fraternities/sororities, one associate HBGLO fraternity, at least one Asian-American sorority, several Latino/a fraternites and sororities and several honorary and service organizations. In addtion, GLO's at the extension campus (Behrend) comprise another 3 NPC sororities, 5 NIC fraternities and one local fraternity.

Barb

Indiana...(considered "the headquarters of the greek community" because so many have their nationals located there)

Miami University (Oxford, Ohio)...EVERYONE is greek

U of Georgia DEFINETLY

If you can get your hands on a copy of "From Here to Fraternity" by Robert Egan, he has some stats in there (they might be about 10 years old, though).

I seem to recall that U of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana was the biggest.

When you say the biggest, do you mean no of people or no. of chapters?

I don't have stats, but Ohio State has a huge greek system (and since the student population is SO big, it's big wheter you're measuring by percentage or by actual numbers).

Also, as someone mentioned, DePauw University (in Greencastle, Indiana) has unbelievable high percentages of greeks. I had a friend who attend there her 1st year, and i think 80% greek sounds about right.

And sort of unrelated...


michelle_azd posted What's up with this book being so hard to get ahold of? It is no longer published, but everyone tells me how good it is, etc. I've had it ordered on Amazon.com for months (if they can find a copy).


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SilverTurtle@greekchat.com
Phi Beta Fraternity
Phi chapter

This probably won't mean anything to you, but to expand your horizons a bit here's a little info from north of the 49th parallel. I believe the University of Western Ontario (UWO) has the largest Greek System in Canada. http://www.greekchat.com/forums/ubb/tongue.gif

Thanks for all your suggestions.

I am putting the list together based upon your comments and here is how it looks now.

These are not ranked.

10 larges "Greek Communities" in N. America

U. of Illinois
U. of Western Ontario
U. of Georgia
U. of Washington
U. of So. California
Ohio State
Penn State
Florida State
Indiana U.
UCLA

And a special honorable mention to DePauw University. It probably is the highest percentage greek.

Also, I have owned (and lost) a copy of From Here to Fraternity and it is a great book. If you find it buy it. Has anyone checked E-bay?

I have spoken to a few friends and they have mentioned some other schools. Does anybody have info on the Greek Systems at the following schools?

Ole Miss, LSU, Texas, Texas Tech, Arizona, Arizona State, U. of Maryland, Rutgers, Syracuse, Wisconsin, Purdue, Clemson, Michigan, and Tennessee

Can anybody get me actual numbers so I can rank these schools?

I'm from Florida, so I guess I'm biased in thinking that FSU and Florida State's Greek systems are large, when they're really not--they simply dominate the social scene. Were you referring to numbers or percentages? I know that Auburn's Greek system is large, along with Dartmouth's (but not for much longer), Birmingham-Southern's (80% of the population, although it's a small school), Rutgers, Penn State, Clemson, Texas, Texas A&M, University of Alabama, Baylor, Miami (in Oxford, Ohio) and Penn State's. During the 1950's, there was an interesting social observation regarding the Penn State Greek system...does anyone else know about it? What about the HBCU's with large or historic Greek systems, like Howard's?

DePauw and Miami's Greek systems definitely deserve a standing ovation...Miami is known as the "home of the fraternity" (or something like that), because so many of the frats were founded there. DePauw, of course, because of the fact that Kappa Alpha Theta was founded there. I think there's another school in Georgia, Illinois, or Arkansa that spawned a lot of the major sororities...I can't recall the name, nor do I want to misplace the founding places of sororities.

Let me say this very plainly.

My intention is to compile a list of the largest Greek Campuses in terms of total number of people.

DePauw and Miami of Ohio are fun to talk about but they are probably too small to make the top 10. Maybe the top 20.

"The Farmville Four" are Kappa Delta, Sigma Sigma Sigma, Zeta Tau Alpha and Alpha Sigma Alpha. They were all founded within 4 years at Longwood College in Farmville, Virginia.

Alpha Chi Omega and Kappa Alpha Theta were founded at DePauw and a couple of other schools were the site of 2 sorority foundings.

Now, does anyone have any hard numbers for any of the schools on the 10 largest greek campus list?

UCLA has I believe 2,000 students in fraternities and sororities. The 11 PHC sororities have an average size of 100 members. The 18 IFC fraternities have an average size of 60 members. I'm just estimating. This does not count the Asian Greek Council or the NPHC.

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andrew watters
Theta Chi – ucla

Have you tried the student activities web pages for those top 10 or so schools yet? It seems they'd have those sorts of statistics for their own student bodies (though they may not have detail on how that compares to other universities). Also, are you looking for total GLO populations? I'd think those numbers would be harder to come by than the IFC/NPC/NPHC numbers.

Hey GreekUSA, here's the scoop on Tennessee. According to the Panhellenic homepage, 17%, of the UT student body is greek (about 3000). UT has 18 sororities, 4 are NPHC, the rest are NPC. We have 25 fraternities (26 until last fall) and I think only one of those is NPHC and the rest are NPC. For any more info, go to www.utk.edu, then go to students, then to division of student affairs, and you'll find the links to greek life!

oops, I meant the rest of the fraternities were NIC, not NPC.

Okay, here are the stats from the Robert Egan book "From Here to Fraternity" (1985)

The Schools with the Largest No. of Greek Chapters:
1. U. Illinois 77 chapters - 51 frat, 26 sor
2. Penn State 70 chapters - 51 frat, 19 sor
3. Ohio State 62 chapters - 41 frat, 21 sor
4. Cornell 61 chapters - 48 frat, 13 sor
5. Purdue 61 chapters - 45 frat, 16 sor
6. U. Michigan 55 chapters - 36 frat, 19 sor
7. U. Virginia 54 chapters - 37 frat, 17 sor
8. Indiana U. 53 chapters - 31 frat, 22 sor
9. UC-Berkeley 52 chapters - 38 frat, 14 sor
10.U. Missouri 51 chapters - 34 frat, 17 sor
(They list the top 50, but I refuse to type them all out! So there is 10 for you!)


Also:
Small schools with large percentages of Greeks (en=enrollment):
1. DePauw University 75% Greek, 2312 en.
2. Wabash College 75% Greek, 774 en.
3. Brenau College 70% Greek, 609 en.
4. Westminster Coll. 68% Greek, 647 en.
5. Transylvania U. 65% Greek, 701 en.

Yes, these stats are a bit old, but hope that it helps anyway!

The Schools with the Largest No. of Greek Chapters:
Okay, here is 11-20 since you are doing a project....
11. U. Florida
12. U. Texas
13. Auburn
14. Iowa State
15. Miami U. (Ohio)
16. U. Maryland
17. Michigan State
18. U. Alabama
19. U. Washington
20. U. Tennessee

By the way, I picked up the Robert Egan book at a 2nd hand book store, since it is out of print (and believe me, I tried everything...a year long search with a bookstore, and contacting BANTAM books directly...nothing worked). Then by some miracle, I saw it in a 2nd hand bookstore and snapped it up! http://www.greekchat.com/forums/ubb/biggrin.gif http://www.greekchat.com/forums/ubb/cool.gif http://www.greekchat.com/forums/ubb/biggrin.gif

GreekUSA,

I'll be happy to supply you with information here at LSU. Give me a few days to get the information for you since I'm working 2 jobs right now(about to start a 3rd one soon) and atending summer school all at the same time.

For now go to www.lsu.edu and click on departments and organizations. From that page,scroll down till you get to student services. You'll see the link for Greek Affairs. Click on it and you'll see all what Greek Life at LSU is all about. We have 10 NPC sororites, 19 IFC fratenities, 5 BGLO fraternities (with Iota Phi Theta coming this fall. They are already having their informational), 4 BGLO sororites(with Sigma Gamma Rho having just been charted this past spring) and 2 local. Not to mention all honorary and professional ones.

This is an interesting side note, LSU has had a chapter of 21 of the 26 NPC sororites on campus at one time or another. http://www.greekchat.com/forums/ubb/smile.gif

[This message has been edited by prospectiverushee (edited June 14, 2000).]

GreekUSA,

I got some more information for you about the greek systen here at LSU.

LSU has an enrollment of about 30,000 students. 12-14% of those enrolled are involved in the greek system here. That doesn't sound very high. How does LSU compare to other schools? I think I read somewhere that the University of Minneisota(or maybe it was Wisconsion) also had a huge greek system.

Thanks to everybody for their "nominations"

I found a good source of information and while it took about 8 hours of pulling data and making estimates I think I have the definitive list.

I am posting it so everybody can comment. If you think it is wrong, tell me why.

Here it is...The 20 largest Greek Systems in the USA measured by total number of members.

1. U. of Florida 8857 members
2. U. of Illinois 6890
3. Penn State 6448
4. Missouri 6272
5. Auburn 6147
6. Ohio State 5652
7. Purdue 5600
8. Michigan State 5313
9. U. of Washington 5116
10. Arizona State 4858
11. Indiana 4761
12. Texas 4644
13. Washington State 4589
14. Wisconsin 4546
15. Georgia 4456
16. Minnesota 4438
17. Maryland 4297
18. Michigan 4296
19. Florida State 4274
20. Virginia Tech 3978

I checked out about 50 schools to get this top 20 so if you are curious how your school did in the rankings e-mail me.

hey michelle_azd now that you are one of the few who have actually seen the book "From Here to Fraternity", how was it? Was it worth the effort? What is it about(briefly)?
Thanks
andrew@dhsigmapi.com

Here's a crazy percentage.... there our 40,000 students at UBC only 600 are greek, which means the percentage of students belonging to GLO's at UBC is 0.015% http://www.greekchat.com/forums/ubb/frown.gif

localsorority:

I already know you are probably right. To confirm those numbers I e-mailed the Greek Advisor at U of F and he briefly told me the numbers were wrong.

He is getting back to me with the correct numbers.

But in my defense I used Princeton Review and they said that 28% of 31,000+ students are greek. For other schools there were no percentages listed so I used some averages to get their numbers.

Thanks for breaking it down for me.

If you can, get your hands on a Baird's Manual, or, I recall seeing this in From Here to Fraternity (out of publication for some time now) - but U Illinois and Illinois State had the largest number of chapters for a single campus (if I remember numbers right, something like 50+ fraternity chapters at each school, not sure of sorority numbers).

From personal observation, Cal Berkeley has a large greek system in number of chapters as well, as does UCLA and USC.

If you're looking for a percentage of students at a campus who are greek, the best way to determine that would be to contact campus Greek Life Directors for specifics.

Here are some updated numbers from the office of Greek Affairs at the U. of Florida....

4300 greeks.

I have no problem moving them down, however it calls into question every other assumption on the list.

Finding out the largest schools in terms of number of chapters is pretty easy but that does not always translate to number of members.

One example is Auburn has 47 chapters and 6147 greek. Purdue has 66 chapters but only 5600 greeks.

If anybody can e-mail their Greek Affairs office and get the accurate numbers on these schools, it would be cool to know...Who really is the biggest.

I really enjoy it. Perhaps what you could do is go to the library and if they don't have it, ask them to do an inter-library loan for you. It may take a while, but surely they should be able to turn up a copy. I really enjoy it and I still refer to it even though my college days are over. Part of it is serious, part of it is funny. I don't know what more to say, but if you can get your hands on it (even if only on loan), then DO!! http://www.greekchat.com/forums/ubb/biggrin.gif

I think you are totally right to have UF as the largest Greek system. Some people think that our Greek system isnt that large because there are not that many soorities and frats, but they fail to recognize that in a school of 50,000 undergrads, over 16% are Greek. And although there might only be 16 sororites, most houses (including mine) have a quota of well over 100 members. Also there are anywhere from 2000-3000 girls that rush each fall. Anyone who attends UF who doesnt believe that only needs to attend the open meeting for rushees at the beginning of the rush rounds. Held in the University Auditorium, I have never seen so many young women in one place at one time.

What is an "alternative lifestyle" fraternity? Does this refer to gay/lesbian/bisexual organizations? (I know of at least 1 "gay" fraterniy... meaning they officially support gays and their needs/causes/etc.)

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SilverTurtle@greekchat.com
Phi Beta Fraternity
Phi chapter

UCLA also has a Latina sorority, Latino fraternity, a multicultural sorority, and an "alternative lifestyle" fraternity.