University of Maryland
 

University of Maryland College Park rush starts soon! Anyone going through? How's it going?

I want details!

I know we have an Alpha Phi chapter there, but I know there are others. Good luck to anyone going through recruitment there! It's a great campus!!!

My baby sister is a freshman at the University of Maryland and formal rush starts on January 28th! So she'll be heading to parties in just a few short days!!! YAY! There's no DZ at Maryland but she has 14 FANTASTIC sororities to choose from:

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

I'll keep you all updated on what she tells me - some of you may have a new sister soon :)

Tell your sister, good luck! We all wish her the best of luck.

And we want DETAILS!!! Even bad ones but definitely good ones too!!

Yeah finally a school with my sorority! :D

I hope that someone from Maryland will keep us updated about rush. :)

*does a dance with Cream* A school with BOTH of our sororities!!! Wahoo!!!!

Oh PS to Cream: We have D Phi E here... theyre always at total!

Happy, happy, joy, joy! :D Cool!

I was near Hunter College the other day and thought of Phi Sigma Sigma. :)

Yeah Phi Sigma Sigma is in the groups to choose from. Anyway, it is great for you to keep us posted about how rush is going for your sister. But it would be even better for us Rush Thread Addicts if you can talk your sister into joining Greek chat and starting her own rush thread. As for this rush addict I've been in a minor withdrawal without all the rush threads for the last month or two.

Good luck to your sister and may she soon find her Greek Home.

Carolyn

Ok, so Maryland Rush begins on tuesday - yay :) all activities are at night after classes - here is the schedule:

Tours: Jan. 28 & 29 from 5 to 11 p.m.
Set of Ten: Jan. 31 from 6 to 9:30 p.m. and Feb. 1 from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Set of Five: Feb. 3 from 6 to 10 p.m.
Preference: Feb. 5 from 6 to 10:15 p.m.

Lokks like they narrow it down from 14-10-5-3---> ONE:)

here's the link to Maryland Panhel in case anyone is interested!

WOW! Busy schedule!! Keep us posted! (that cut from 10 to 5 must be brutal!)

A girl I was friends with in high school is a Kappa Delta down there...supposedly they're supposed to be solid at U. Maryland.

I rushed/pledged ZTA at UMCP so keep me updated! Best of luck to your sister and all those rushing!

I was also a ZTA at MD and graduated last May. My chapter had a rush workshop w/ alumnae last weekend that I went to....it was so fun being back there and seeing all of the girls all excited and getting ready for rush. If I find out any fun details, I will be sure to let you know. I will probably be heading down there for set of 10 on Sat. Rush was always my favorite part of the year, and not being there for it is kinda depressing :( , but oh well.....I know my fantastic Iota Omega's are going to do awesome :)

In an odd round about way Recruitment at UMd is helping with our Recruitment this coming weekend....

A ZTA legacy"jane" is going through this weekend and a little hesitant bc her one friend here at college isn't. BUT Today "jane" found out that her best friend from home, 'julie', is rushing and with the possiblity of 'julie' becoming her sister in addition to best friend, 'jane' is now definetly going through recruitment here!

Did ya follow that one? LOL

Good luck Iota Omega! :D

I all :)

I just talked to my sister really quickly and she had a BLAST today at rush events! She visited 7 houses (I believe) tonight and she said it was amazing. She is so impressed with the beautiful houses, how friendly and excited the girls are - everything! She's having a blast. She absolutely loves XYZ, ABC, and DE right now - all of the others she's likes a lot too and is most definitely keeping an open mind about.

She had to go to bed and couldn't tell me anymore :( But she has the other 7 houses tomorrow and she promised a more full and complete update then :D!

woohoo! Keeps us posted! I'm hoping KD was the two letter house she loved!

UMD has a fabulous KD chapter!!!!!!!!!

I hope that she has a great time! :D

In case anyone was curious... yesterday she visited:

ADPi
AXO
AOPi
KD
PSS
SK
SDT

And today she visits:

AEPhi
APhi
Tri-Delta
DPhiE
DG
KAT
ZTA :)

One thing they changed about the first round last year that I really like is that all of the sororities have different booths in the same large room. That way, things are kept on a more level playing field, and it is A LOT less tiring and intimidating for the PMN's-I mean, being marched from house to house to 14 different houses for 25 mins each can be a *bit* overwhelming. This way, they never leave the room they started it. It really helped w/ retention :)

UPDATE!
 

I just thought I'd update everyone on my sisters rush experience!! She went today to pick up her invitations for the next round and.....




















ALL 14 SORORITIES INVITED HER BACK!!!!! WOOOHOOO GO SARA! :D:D

I actually had no doubt in my mind that she would be invited back to a majority if not all of them! She did tell me that a lot of her friends and girls in her groups were only invited back to 8,9,10, 11 houses - and the next round of cuts should be worse since they narrow it from 10 --> 5

This weekend sheactually begins going to the physical houses as opposed to a large room with the booths!

She is returning to....

Alpha Chi Omega
Alpha Epsilon Phi
Alpha Omicron Pi
Alpha Phi
Delta Delta Delta
Delta Phi Epsilon
Kappa Alpha Theta
Kappa Delta
Phi Sigma Sigma
Sigma Delta Tau

She has 5 houses that she is absolutely in love with - but she is definetely keeping an open mind - i tell her that every night :)

The round of 10 starts this friday with 5 on friday and 5 on saturday!! She's planning on wearing these really cute dark khaki colored wide leg pants with cuffs on the bottom and some sort of cute top and pointy boots. And saturday she's thinking about a knee length skirt with calf boots! She's such a beautiful girl with long blond hair (if any of you have seen my picture we look soooo much alike) so she should look very stylish!

It was funny b/c she called me and was like, i was talking to this one girl and then 2 more girls came and started talking to us and then 3 more girls came after that and i was like in this circle of XYZ girls!

I said thats a good thing :) the more girls you talk to the better!!

I'll let everyone know more whan i get the next update!

WOW! Congratulations on your sister's success! On a personal note, I'm happy to see D Phi E on her list! :D :cool: :)

All 14 invites -how fun for her!!!

WOW!! How great for her! Too bad neither DZ or Pi Phi are on campus, but your sister obviously rocks!! Yeah for her!

I know - no DZ :( And my mom is an AGD and theyre not there either :( Oh well, we'll have a NEW greek link in the family!!! YAY!

Pi Phi used to be at MD but lost their charter. Same with AGD. Believe it or not at it's glory, UMD had I think 19 sororities!

Kappa, AZD, AGD, Pi Phi and GPB all have lost their charters for one reason or another. Mostly low numbers but Kappa was incredible and lost it for another reason.

Maryland has a VERY competitive greek system and it can be jsut as brutal as the "southern" schools. Though Maryland IS south of the mason dixon line but don't get me started!

Good luck to your sister.

I find it VERY interesting that she cut the "lower" houses on campus. I thuoght this new way of doing tours was to eliminate the bias between the low tier and hig tier houses but who knows.

PLEASE keep us posted!!!

Congrats to your sister on all those invites! :) Hope she has fun at round 2... good luck to her.

What is the difference between a high tier house and a low tier house?

Actually, low vs. high tier is just my opinion. I'm just going by numbers and retention rates after the rounds of recruitment.

Do I think SK, ZTA, ADPi have "lower quality" girls than the other houses? ABSOULTELY NOT.

However, that is how, regretably, they are perceived by the Greek system as a whole of the Maryland campus.

I was just commenting that after just one round, this woman's sister cut the, what I perceive to be the "lower tier" houses.

When the recruitment of round one "tours" went from the houses to the armory, I heard that was to make the playing field more level.

It seems to me that if it worked the lower tier houses wouldnt' be getting cut so soon.

Does that make any sense?

I don't mean to offend -- it's just my opinion.

IowaHawkeye--

TONS of congrats to your sister!! I hope she has a fantastic time with the rest of recruitment :) MD is a tough Greek campus at times, but she'll be fine! Can't wait to hear the rest of the story!!

Cool! Keep us posted on what happens next... and on the fraternity side of the coin, there is a chapter of my fraternity (Epsilon Delta chapter) at UMD. :)

I know just about every campus is like that - even my own. All of the sororities are fantastic and the sisterhood is real and true - but there are some houses that are just not on the same level as others. I think that idea about round one being a level playing field is fantastic - maybe it will take a few years to really show that it's working?

I asked my sister why she cut who she did... and she said b/c the girls she talked to didn't have much to say to her, the conversation was dull, or she just could not see herself in that particular house. I reminded her that every girl has off days and to not forget that as many parties she has to go to and as sick of them she gets at the end - so do the girls in the chapters. It's hard work!!!

Nevertheless, I know nothing about Maryland's Greek system - so when she told me who she cut I was like, "No! I love the ZTAs, theyre philanthropy is the best!" or "SK's motto is so cute though and they seem to have such a great sisterhood!" :)

But I know she's following her heart on this one and her cuts were for the right reason: she just couldn't see herself in any of those chapters!

my sister really is looking for the "home away from home" in a sorority - girls she can trust, love, and rely on. We're from Chicago - and she is quite a ways from home - the only person she knew when she moved there was her boyfriend - and he's at the naval academy so she barely ever sees him.

I forgot how much I missed the whole excitment of the rush experience until she started the process - and now i can't wait to find out where she goes :)

I'm a little confused about something...

ZetaGirl22 mentioned that all round 1 parties were held in one big room. How does that work? :confused: I would think that the noise from 14 sororities x however many sisters + however many PNMs would be so deafening as to make it impossible to carry on a conversation. And this must be one h*!! of a huge room to hold that many women! How big were the booths?

I can see where it would be a good idea to keep all the sororities together so PNMs don't have to do a lot of running around - but why couldn't they do separate rooms in the same building? That's what we did, and it worked very well - PNMs only had to walk a few feet and didn't have to go outside, it levels the playing field (especially since some sororities are housed and some aren't), and each sorority could do its own thing without noise interference from everyone else. I'm guessing that there just aren't 14 suitable rooms in close proximity?

I may be a bit off but this is how it works. There are only a certain amount of sisters from each sorority allowed at their booth. This is an example of helping level the field for those houses where the numbers are low.

Back in the day, during tours the sisters would run out of their house and perform dances and it was great. That is, until the smallest houses would run out and they would be so so small, you saw it right away that they were "lower tier."

Round one is in the armory I think and it's huge. So fourteen sororities can fit no problem.

Does that help?

Tonight and tomorrow are Philanthropy/House Tours!! My sister has 5 houses to go to each day!!

"During the Philanthropy round you will see ways in which chapters donate their time and services to charitable causes. Each chapter will be working on different activities that will relate to their philanthropy. You will also meet more sisters and, in turn, they will be asking more questions to get to know you better."

It does make sense. Cutting out the house tours evens in the playing field so that sororities with really fancy houses, lots of alumnae money, etc. are on the same playing field and those other houses without as much money (could be for various reasons, newer to the campus, etc).

No matter what anyone does, you can't force girls to choose the "lower tier" houses. Houses that are perceived as "lower tier" are usually perceived as such for a reason. And usually the only people who can change that are the members of those "lower tier" houses themselves.

If girls aren't going back to them (and taking from what IowaHawkeye has said about her sister's comments), it's probably because of a lack of rush skills, lack of enough preparation, lack of enthusiasm, etc.

Moving all the groups to present in one room can't do anything to change the girls' interpersonal skills.

If there is a concern about leveling the playing field to "boost up" those "lower tier" houses, a more helpful idea would be for the successful groups to offer them help with rush preparation, and emphasis on good COBing. COBing did wonders for my chapter- we got great girls that helped build up our chapter, and our chapter's rush skills, and now we excel on campus.

Iowahawkeye- congrats to your sister on getting all the invites! That must surely be a great sign for her. Looks like she may have her pick of who she wants! Sounds like she's one of those girls that goes through that absolutely every house is in love with! Can't wait to hear more details!

Okay, since I was in one of these "lower tier" sororites that you speak of, I feel like I have to chime in. Our reputaion, unfortunately, supersedes us. When I first joined, we were honestly not a very strong chapter. We were small, and were perceived as inactive or "goody goodies." We happen to have had the highest GPA for some time now, and there are those that think we were geeks, or what have you. For some reason, we have never shined during formal recruitment. During informal and COB, we almost double the size of the new member class every year. It is not due to a lack of preparation or rushing skills let me tell you, but formal recruitment is always REALLY stressful on our girls b/c of our small size, each girl has to bear twice the workload as a member in a larger house. We had a very bad recruitment year my sophomore year, and have been slowly coming back from that, and finally this year things seem to be turning around for those girls, and I am VERY excited for them. MD"S greek system is VERY tough. A reputaion can stick with you for years and years, even if it isn't accurate anymore. Also, there are only 4 or 5 chapters out of 14 that are at total-I don't know why that is, but it is. But regardless of what happens, I always know that the girls who end up at my chapter are all there for the right reasons, and stick with it throughout college, which is definitely more than I can say for some.

Nicole,
I'm so glad that Sara is having a good time with rush! I can't wait to see where she ends up!

I know she'll be happy at whichever house is lucky enough to have her but I still have to say: She's OUR legacy, darnit! grrrr! We need a chapter at Maryland!!!

Ok, done venting :D

PS Is she still with her mid??

Tracy I agree!!! :D She is ours ;) and I really wish we had a chapter at UMD so that we could share our beautiful sisterhood with her! And yes, she's still with her mid!!

I thought that Maryland had to cancel their parties last night and that all 10 parties were today, Saturday, as a result.

Yes, there was a computer glitch yesterday, so parties were cancelled, and all 10 were held today.