Fall Rush at UGA
 

I just transferred to UGA this past January, and i didn't partcipate in Spring Rush. I just thought it would be better to go through with Formal Rush in August. But i have been talking to some friends and they say it's harder to rush when you're not a Freshman?

I know Rush is primarily for Freshman coming into the school, but at my other school you could be a Senior and Rush for a Fraternity if you wanted to. I was just wondering if anyone knows for sure if not being a Freshman is a disadvantage for rushing at UGA? I just want to know all this before i register to Rush, because that doesn't seem fair to only favor towards Freshman. A new member is a new member no matter what year someone is.

But if someone could fill me in, i'd appreciate it.

I am in your same boat. Most of the fraternities at UGA that are likely to decline someone based off of not being a freshman are likely to not give you a chance anyways unless you are well connected (just from what I have been told). Though being a senior and rushing may be a different story regardless of situation...

Anyhow, I would suggest doing what I am doing now and going to as many Summer rush events as possible if possible. That is likely to get rid of most of the possible negatives you get stuck with for not being a freshman.

Yeah, well i'm not a Senior. I'm a sophomore, but i was just saying that at the school i went to before UGA you could be a senior and Rush, and there wasn't any problems. But i'll have to look to see what summer events are happening....

Solid advice.

Rnead- while naturally it varies from chapter to chapter, it also varies from campus to campus whether non-freshmen generally have a good shot at rushing a fraternity.

At a school with a very competitive Greek system, like Georgia, top and mid tier houses will have lots of rushees competing for a small number of pledge class spots. And a great many of those rushees will come to Georgia as freshman already knowing they want to go Greek and already having many friends from their pre-college days who are at Georgia and in fraternities.

If a chapter can fill its pledge class with freshman who are legacies and/or are already know to the chapter as solid potential members- then it does not make sense to not take a person like that so that a sophomore new to Greek life can take that spot. And the top tier houses will fall into this category. Does not mean it is impossible for a sophomore, but the odds are against you unless you know several people in that chapter who really want you to join.

This has nothing to do with you personally- it is just a matter of choosing between a freshman who is already known to the chapter and who will be there to pay dues for 4 years versus a sophomore who is an unknown entity and who will only be there to pay dues for 3 years.

One good thing about Georgia compared to many other top southern Greek systems is that there is a very broad range of solid mid-tier houses with good sized chapters that have good social schedules with sororities. And many of those houses regularly rush and recruit sophomores. So you should have some good choices- more than you might at other campuses.

As for juniors and seniors, that really is just about impossible at a school like Georgia. It happens, but it is rare. By the time I was a junior in college, I was still living in the house but I was getting a little past my time to really be living it up and going to every party etc. And that same thing applied to most of my other friends. Junior and senior year are still times to have fun, but they are also times to be thinking about getting through upper division courses, grad school or getting a job- certainly not pledging a fraternity.

Do you have friends in fraternities at Georgia? That is who I would suggest you talk to next. Also any ladies you are friends with who are in sororities. If you can come into fall rush with members of the Greek community to vouch for you and support you, that will go a long way to putting you in a position to have good choices. Going into formal rush without having done that will be very risky indeed.

PS- You are right, it is better to go through Fall Rush. Bigger pledge classes, football season etc.

Do you know the tier system for the fraternities at UGA?

Well, I have my own opinion of what they are- but it would not be appropriate for me to get into that in a forum like this in my role as a moderator. There are threads here and on other sites which list them (and which are all pretty much in agreement)- so if you go digging you can find the info you want there.

I will say this- just find a good house you like and go with it. As long as they have a decent house, a good sized chapter, good mixers and are guys you get along with- that is what really matters.

Any top or mid tier house is going to be selective. If you find one you like and they want you there- then you have a good situation going for you.

I will say this- at Georgia I think the majority of chapters with houses are top or mid tier. At other southern schools I know about (which is not all of them) the top and mid tier are seldom more than half the chapters.

You ask and I shall deliver

The Chi Phi and LXA in the top tier has always surprised me to some degree.

Well, as long as we are going there I would demote LXA and Chi Phi to second tier, and elevate Pike to second tier as well. Top tier could be argued, but as at Texas- SAE, FIJI and KA are THE undisputed top tier chapters.

And I must say AGR has incredible country band parties. Those were some of my favorite events when I was at Georgia.

What about Theta Chi? They had a pretty solid chapter at Georgia when I was there and also some great parties. The house was massive and in just the right spot on Milledge Avenue with a ballroom for parties that could hold 100s of people.

Not a coincidence about the top tiers being the same.

The later posts in the thread say Theta Chi is 2nd tier.

I'm confused

Why would there only be so many spots in a pledge class?

If chapter x wants to give bids to 30 guys, then so what? Why would 29 be the magic number?

You are right RU OX Alum to an extent. Fraternities are not bound by the quota requirements imposed on sororities. But there are definitely internally defined boundaries about head count.

It is the approach that is different. A given fraternity might plan on accepting 40 pledges for their fall class. There is no external entity to make that a firm number as is the case with sorority quotas. But it is an internally determined number based on a variety of factors specific to the chapter and to any alumni who work with that chapter.

A top tier fraternity does not have any trouble getting good candidates, plus their financial budget is all they need to operate at a level they want. So the question is how to figure out the number of pledges needed to maintain that status- and then only take top candidates.

If a chapter sets their needs at 40 and gets there, and then at the last minute guy #41 who is a perfect fit comes along- they can easily make the class 41 pledges if they so desire. But they will only do that if the 41st person is an all-star candidate. Since they already have all the money and pledges they need, it makes no sense to take a chance on that 41st person by pledging someone they cannot be 100% comfortable with. If a chapter is king on campus and has all they need- it makes no sense to take even a small risk on somone whose history is not known to be suitable to the chapter.

I agree with the not risking your chapter's status, but I'm still kind of confused. Say you could do that with 40 guys. But some of them are twins (just for the hypothetical) and so it's 46 guys total, or whatever. And then they meet other guys that they really want. Now, I know you all have those houses down there, so if they coulndn't all live there, I'd get it. But what if 55 people showed up for rush that you actually wanted to pledge, out of the 100 or however many that rush. Would you still not the 15 people?

Sure- and it does happen. When I was an active we had a particularly good rush one summer and ended up taking almost 40 pledges instead of the usual 25 or so we would normally take in the fall.

Worked out pretty good, but it had its drawbacks. Those guys ended up being a huge voting block in the chapter and that created some friction- especially when they were upperclassmen and held almost all the major offices in the chapter.

Sometimes it can work for the better to have a mega-sized pledge class come along, but usually only if you are in growth mode or if fundamental change is needed in the chapter. If things are running along on course however, it can be problematic.

Oh okay then, that makes sense. I thought it was just arbitrary. I agree about not taking too many, one of the groups here that always had big pledge classes was hit harder than the rest of us during a one or two year dry spell of interested guys, so instead of their of usual 5 fall/ 10 spring class size, one spring after like 3 semester of only 3 - 5 pledges a semester they put bids out on i forget how many people, but they wound up with 19 pledges, which was more than the rest of the chapter minus graduating seinors. I think that pledge class held every position as sophmores until they graduated.

Old Row Tiers
 

I would be careful relying on the suggested fraternity tiers at UGA and serioiusly question the rankings. When I saw the prior post, I went to Old Row to see what posters had said. Almost all of the posts are by a handful of people, most of whom spend time trashing each other and other houses (a most unfratty thing to do if you're in a decent house). Go through summer rush (a lot of the houses have websites and list rush parties - rush is not a time to be timid - but don't be obnoxious either) - most houses have given out or have commitments for a significant portion of their pledge classes before formal rush starts. In the end its not the tier but how well you fit with the group.

[quota] lot of the houses have websites and list rush parties [/quote]

In my experience, which may be way different at UGA, but most of the time chapters with decent up-to-date websites with all sorts of rush events, generally aren't quality chapters.

:rolleyes:

ewalt?

those that don't believe in tiers are likely in the lowest one.

In my experience, which may be way different at UGA, but most of the time chapters with decent up-to-date websites with all sorts of rush events, generally aren't quality chapters.[/quote]
very true

The prior poster was concerned about rushing as a sophmore and how he would do in rush. I agree that most top houses don't have or have very poor webpages. But if poster wants to go greek and he doesn't have an in with a house or two, that might be is only option for summer rush. As to top tiers - I didn't say there aren't different tiers (I just differed on which ones are top). But I don't think the posters on Old Row were top tier guys - I don't think top tier guys spend a lot of time trashing each other on the web - its the bottom tier guys who are doing this to try to make themselves look better.

I've wondered the same thing about who is really doing the online rankings, outings, etc.

I can completely see a nice guy from a good chapter taking a little time to explain how stuff works just because he's a nice guy and because he wants to make sure his chapter keeps getting good guys.

I can't really see a guy from a good chapter preferring to spend his time talking crap about other chapters or doing online research about other posters when he could be enjoying whatever spoils come from actually being in a top tier chapter.

Unless it's recent alums from good chapters who are really bored at work, maybe.

The tiers listed tend to be right on. And there generally isn't a whole lot of bashing other chapters at your school (unless someone who you know to be bottom tier starts trying to act like they're the sh*t), that's more on JuicyCampus and is more bottom tier guys. Most of it is recent alums at work/actives in class who have to be there but don't have anything better to do.

This is exactly true. People who are 2nd tier accept the 2nd tier. Not a terrible lot of bitching unless it's like a "Are they low 1st or top 2nd tier?" type thing.There's only bitching and fighting when it's some Acacia from Texas claiming that they're fratty or something like that. I mean come on.

I don't doubt the rankings are basically accurate although I do sometimes wonder how people can get impressions to discern among different tier groups that they don't really associate with.

I would think that within your own tier, you'd actually know, but beyond that, how would anyone know about groups that they weren't having socials with who weren't clearly outstanding or on the brink of folding?

I've said this before, I think: the rankings may do disservice to the kind of journeyman groups that are a pleasure to be in and make college more fun but aren't really dazzling folks in the first tier. Guys and girls who aren't going to get bids to the top groups (because of lack of connections or whatever) might really benefit from looking at these groups in some other context other than just as third tier or whatever.

It's particularly true for girls who don't really end up having that much control over rush. If you aren't getting a bid to a higher tier group, what good does it do to know in advance that the group that wants you is "bottom feeder" in the eyes of a guy who graduated three years ago or even that the group is bottom half of the second tier?

The guys tiers are a lot more important I think, because if you're rushing it makes a big difference to know if in the middle tiers you're looking at a house that is only slightly worse than the very best houses or a house that is a lot closer to the houses where you might as well not join a fraternity than it is to the top ones.

Sorority tiers on the other hand are based primarily on which of the fraternity tiers they do their events with, then ranked within that tier by what stereotype fits their house.

And obviously some of the lower tier houses may be a lot of fun or very rewarding to be in, just they do very poorly if judged by the same categories which establish who the very top houses are.

It's interesting that you say that about sorority tiers being primarily based on fraternity socials. I think popularity with fraternities is a component of sorority tiers and is the primary reason why some groups can't ever move up to the next level, but I had considered recruitment results the primary thing for sororities.

Interesting.

Well, when you see these tiers they're usually being put together by guys. The reasoning tends to be "we're top-tier, the girls we hang out with are top-tier."

And yes this does keep sororities from moving up some, but part of it is the girls' fault too. There are guys in the fraternity who would like to do stuff with them as they improve, but they keep agreeing to do stuff with the same lower tier houses they've always hung out with and say a high second-tier house makes themselves look bad if they have a social with a sorority who had a lot of their other events with much worse houses.

Probably true, but man, it seems lame. Very middle school popularity thinking.

UGAalum94- one thing that I think helps is to know that top tier fraternities and sororities tend to recruit from very specific places and have done so for a very long time. At Texas, I think it is safe to say the very top end GLOs get most of their numbers out of a very few high schools. So that right there establishes a lot of how the tier system works.

More than anything else, it is driven by the natural urge to go to college and find "safety" in people you know and have things in common with. This is an urge that lasts all through life- and it applies to everyone, not just the affluent. I like to think I am one of those people who can interact comfortably at all levels and truly enjoy and respect people for who they are, but I also have a very specific comfort zone which, for example, dictates where I live. That is something I am scrupulously picky about even though I am more comfortable than most to drive around and do business/hang out in many parts of town.

Many people in top tier organizations choose to wall themselves off in that small world. Their loss, but it is an attitude that came before and will endure after they go Greek.

If a person is comfortable and happy with their chapter, it is easy to talk about the tiers and be practical about it. Talking about them here helps I think in guiding people who are unfamiliar with Greek life since it educates them in the fact that there can be a big difference between a top tier chapter and the chapter that is right for the person looking for a place to pledge.

Granted, that is not how it always goes down- so I get your point. But I think that most people who have a truly deep and angry opposition to the notion of "tiers" are people who are not in top houses and wish they were. And people like that are doing their own chapters a disservice because that attitude means they think they deserve something else but pledged where they did just to have letters. (And for the record, I am not including you in that group since I think you are talking more about the presentation of the discussion and not the existence of tiers.)

Denying whats obviously there is lame.

Very interesting discussion, much of which I agree with. As to the tier thing, everything tends to be ranked (schools, grad schools, sports teams) some of which is based on performance and a lot on perception. My intital point, which was not clearly made, was that three people on another site, ranked houses. That information was then posted here as an accurate list. And the three that made the list were bashing houses (a low tier activity in my mind). They might be right in the rankings, but I think the guy going through rush should consider the source of the list.

While I don't condone "bashing houses", you have to admit that at nearly every campus there are houses which are running jokes amongst everyone better than them. To strongly object to tiers and honest observations about houses suggests (as has been mentioned) that someone is in one of these fairly low rated houses and resents the fact that they wound up somewhere other than top-tier.

I didn't go reread the tier thread in question, but it's generally reasonable to assume that most of the posters are somewhere between the top tier and the middle of the second tier. If you aren't looking for a "fratty" house or social events with the top sororities, than no the list may not apply to you.

But again to just say "look at them making fun of bad houses and making these arbitrary tiers, they are ridiculing the lower tier, that's lower tier in itself" only suggests to me that you protest a bit too much and aren't real happy with where others consider your house to fit in to that matrix.

EE-BO, a little off topic, but, I've been wondering how the top 10% rule (especially this year, which was brutal) will affect this, and the greek system as a whole.

As it becomes more and more difficult to get in UT, less and less of your typical "fraternity type" guys are getting accepted. I know that at our high school this year, pretty much NOBODY who would normally go "top tier" got in. They are mostly all heading to A&M, which was their second choice, but they got accepted:o there. These boys include some strong, big dollar, legacy types to "top tier" houses at Texas.

Will an opening up to non-feeder type schools have to occur to keep up the quality of the pledges?

I know when I mentioned some of the guys who are going to Texas from our high school to my son, his comment was, "Well, they'll make great ...'s", meaning, he wouldn't tell his rush chairmen about them - so guys are going to have to come from somewhere:rolleyes:

Maybe, and denying it certainly doesn't do anything to change reality.

But it just seems that groups could approach it more like individuals do, it seems to me. If there's a person that I think I might enjoy knowing, I don't elect not to do stuff with them because they have friends I'm not crazy about. I might choose not to go to the same event as the friends I don't like that much, but I wouldn't say, well, I can't associate with you because I'm going to catch your friends' uncoolness.

I understand that the reputations are apparently all interlocked, but it seems like if you had confidence in your group's being good, you could risk it.

Exactly. And it is important for that discussion to happen because every big Greek system, including mine, has low tier chapters which give out bids the first time you walk in the door- and a LOT of people new to the rush process fall for that and commit to something far less than what they thought or were suitable for.

The typical pattern is to get a huge pledge class knowing a lot of them will quit and go somewhere else in a future semester- and that sucks for the rushees who were not advised in advance what to watch out for and who to be suspicious about when a bid comes too fast (and it is ALWAYS suspicious when a bid is extended on a first visit.)

The other common trap is for guys to get sold on the "closeness and better brotherhood" of a small chapter where everyone knows each other- with the lie being that small size is automatically better than large. Another good way to sucker a rushee in who has not done his homework.

And of course a lot of the low tiers will talk in rush about how they "plan" to have a mixer with a top tier sorority that fall. Not all of them do, but it sure is a common tactic in chapters with inferiority complexes.

This is why tier discussions can be important in my opinion. They make it clear to candidates that there are vast differences in the houses and let them know when they here the big talk during rush who is telling the truth and who is feeding them a line to sucker them into pledging.

For me, it's not the listing or the rankings themselves that make me wonder about who is doing them. It's that I would honestly hope that people in really good groups have something better to do during the regular year. A little posting seems normal. Posting as frequently as say I do here in the summer, would indicate that you didn't have much of a life which wouldn't be the mark of a top tier social life to me.

I can see why we discourage posting tiers, especially for girls here, because it's just going to result in big arguments and for girls, I really do think it does a disservice to the system overall because of the way recruitment works for girls.

The way that groups are expected to take quota and typically not go over does funny things to the process, as does the huge size of the groups and the potential for all the members to want to bring in their friends while they don't actually have room for them. If you tell girls in advance to sort of write off a bunch of groups, you basically might be setting them up for complete failure since you don't know what their relative strength will be compared to the whole pool of PNMs. And if a bunch of girls drop out or recruitment, that affects the number of girls that top groups can take, so it can hurt all the groups no matter what tier they are because they get to take fewer of the girls that they actually want to give bids to.

And we probably disagree about this, but I don't think there are that many groups where a girl is actually better off not joining at all than joining if that's the bid she ends up with.

With guys, the groups rush and offer bids in the summer, control their own size, have spring and fall pledge classes if they want, and feel absolutely no pressure to take a certain number of guys. A guy can get multiple bids and choose among them. So a good candidate seems to have a lot more control over ending up at a higher tier group if the group wants him. So for guys, it would seems that posting tiers does a lot less harm to the guys rushing and to the system overall.

ETA: EE-BO, I actually find discussion of tiers really interesting and I suspect that even the people who post stuff like "only you will know the best group for you" rhetoric know that tiers exists. And with guys, it may not do any harm to talk about tier and even do some good for guys coming in. But, and this could just be my bias based on where my group was in the tiers while I was in college, I think it's different for girls since the process is so different and since the focus of NPC is kind of creating an even playing field in numbers. And there's a really big difference of every group giving bids the same day and each girl only getting one. On some level if the point is about helping PNMs, meaningful girl tiers could just be of two ranks: accept your bid or try to re-rush. But I don't think any member of a NPC group is publicly going to label a group as "try to re-rush" because we all know that at some campus it's our group in that position and a lot of us sincerely want to see all the groups succeed.

Hi srmom,

The impact has been felt at all levels, and it goes hand in hand with the housing issues facing fraternities at Texas.

Overall IFC membership is down from pre-Hopwood days (Hopwood was the name of the court case that eventually led to the 10% rule for anyone not familiar with the story.)

That, combined with much higher housing costs, has cut down greatly on the number of viable fraternities at Texas who own homes- and even more on the overall number of IFC groups (though the emergence of new Greek councils covering other GLO systems keeps the overall number fairly consistent.)

When I was in school, the top 5 or 6 fraternities consistently kept their numbers in the 150-180 range with the largest house being over 200. And top mid tier houses like mine typically ran from 80-100 guys.

As of this spring, only 5 chapters at Texas have over 100 guys- with the top head count being 168 (I have 10 years of IFC data sitting in front of me, hence my ability to be so specific- though I prefer to not name chapters.)

In Fall 2002, IFC totals were nearly 2,000 with 84 being the average chapter size. Today the figure is just under 1,500 with 68 the average chapter size.

Smaller chapters find it harder to cover housing costs in an environment where property taxes have risen as much as 400% since 2004 when the rezoning went into effect and land values skyrocketed. That is easing up some now, but some chapters now face property taxes over $100,000 a year- over $200,000 in one case.

Right now I think 4-5 smaller chapters are in serious financial trouble (my personal estimate based on their size and housing costs), but there are also some serious recolonization efforts going on since Texas is a campus where most fraternities want a strong presence. So it is hard to know if the overall number will go down as I expect, but it is certainly incredibly expensive now for anyone to own property and a surprising number of chapters here are renting at the moment.

In the big picture, the top tier houses will be fine. Their GPAs are incredible- over the all UT men's average and in the low 3.0 range. UT has always had special arrangements with top private schools to admit students based on class rank and SAT score without regard to a 10% threshold and it is my understanding those agreements are still in place though more stringent. So students from top private schools- a key source of rushees for top houses- have a harder time getting into UT than before, but it is not quite the crapshoot it is for most students.

Overall the change at UT has been good for Greek life. While I disagree strongly with the 10% rule and think it should go back to being an applicant-based consideration with high school quality mattering a great deal, the fact is that UT is overall a far more serious institution academically in terms of the student body.

At fraternities this has meant higher GPAs, a desire to keep as many pledges as possible and not chase them off with excess "activities" and also a great reduction in the amount of time that goes into party builds and other stuff that could interfere with academics.

Most of the serious hazing and RM incidents you see today are from the smaller and newer GLOs, some of them "fringe" groups with no real organized national leadership. The more established GLOs are far more responsible and civilized places since that party crowd with bad grades cannot get into UT anymore. This also, I think, explains the apparent rise in serious incidents at nearby public universities which are easier to get into and where a lot of those guys now have to go since UT is not an option.

Long story short- Greek Life at UT is going to be fine. 5 years from now I expect there will be fewer chapters and those chapters will be larger in size. And at the top levels, there will be little- if any- change assuming there are not any major incidents.