Why? Sophomore UGA story
 

Just found this site while looking for an impossible answer. An oustanding candidate had a miserable rush experience at UGA. High GPA (3.9), personable, actively involved in several philanthropies, Greek family history, tons of very favorable recs (close family friends, past chapter officers), attractive (Homecoming court), politically astute (class President), numerous friends/other connections and went into rush with a VERY open attitude. IOW, everything that, at least I, think about when thinking of sororities. Can there be THAT much bias against sophomores? Is there a valid reason for it that I am missing? I'm not talking about not getting the sorority that she wanted, she was cut by everyone BEFORE prefs. I can't believe that she could not find a home. Please help me understand.

No one here can answer your question.

Membership selection is confidential and no one can answer your question accurately.

Ideas:
- She did not maximize her options
- She did something her freshman year that earned her a bad reputation
- HS accolades mean very little for a sophomore
- She's up against hundreds of other "perfect" girls and just wasn't memorable.

Paging OTW's signature link!

If a sorority doesn't choose to have someone in their new member class, then the time to release her IS before prefs. Everyone who attends pref is somewhere on the chapter's bid list and therefore, a possible new member.

wow...this gives me no hope at all. i am planning on transferring to UGA and rushing my junior year. i am not in love with the sororities at the school i am at now because they put such an emphasis of being greek, and if you aren't greek then you are judged. i don't want to be affliated with girls that are like that. i know some girls in sororities at UGA and they are so very sweet and friendly. thats what i want to be affliated with. now hearing that great sounding sophomore was cut gives me no hope at all.

If you are only transferring to UGA because you want to be in a sorority there, I would rethink this plan.

Did you actually go through rush at your school and meet the women, or are you making this judgement without any firsthand experience?

my big sister pledged as a junior last fall.

there are lots of reasons as to why a girl could be cut, regardless of what year she is. maybe she didn't seem interested at the houses. maybe they didn't feel like she clicked with them. maybe she wasn't involved enough in COLLEGE....because i can tell you now, as a sophmore who rushed, high school achievements mean VERY little when you are rushing as a sophmore--let alone a junior--because you've been in college a year. a year is more than enough time to get VERY involved within UGAs campus. I wouldn't even bother asking a sophmore what she did in high school while rushing her--i'd be more interested in what she's doing NOW.

also I'm not sure what you meant by "they put such an emphasis on being greek that if you aren't greek you are judged," but sororities everywhere do that. just as people not in sororities judge those in sororities.

Each sorority at UGA is different in how they treat upperclassman (i think) What I do know is back in my day we pledged a lot of juniors, but not anymore. I know at least one sorority on campus has an internal rule they can pledge no sophmores. My sorority has a limit of 3 or 4 I not sure how many, but i know it is VERY competitive for a sophmore. The thinking is (which I don't agree with) is a freshman will be there all 4 years. I know every year there are freshman who pledge that drop out and I'd much rather have that sophmore that knows this is for her, but that is the reality. The rules aren't set by the girls (they want to pledge their friends), but by their national or alum advisors.

Exactly. We don't know!

#1 is unlikely because the OP says the PNM was cut from all chapters.
#2 is a possibility.
#3 is a possibility, if she did not continue to be involved at UGA (also, the 3.9, is that HS or college?)
#4, a possibility for "popular" chapters, but this argument doesn't really hold up with chapters that make fewer cuts and make their cuts later on in recruitment.

My money is on #2 and/or #3.

I don't know of any national sorority that says you are not allowed to pledge [insert class status here]. They would be in buttloads of discrimination suits if they had anything like that in their bylaws or policies. Ditto putting something like that in a chapter bylaw. You just couldn't do it without getting in all kinds of trouble.

Maybe it's an "unwritten" rule within a chapter, but that would be it.

I think the number of sophomore is something looked at very carefully at some chapters, and I think advisers do have to make some heavy "suggestions" to the chapters sometimes for the long term health of the chapter. (You don't want to end up with a huge percentage of your chapter graduating at one time, I think, is the thinking maybe even more than "only" being involved for three years rather than four.)

I don't know if the rules are written or unwritten, but if everyone knows during work week that it would be better to take only a few sophomores or upperclassmen, the chapter may just regard it as a recruitment goal.

And honestly, the OP may be a "slipping through the cracks" kind of situation. If the chapters had a few sophomore legacies each, they may have liked her but not wanted to risked ending up with 10% of the 2008 pledge class graduating with the 2007. It's likely not a very personal decision although it probably feels that way to her. And it wasn't like there was a cooperative effort not to give her a bid.

On the flip side of "getting four years from a girl" is the burn-out rate. Of course, I come from a campus that pledging as a sophomore happens in every house, including top tier, and most houses are open to pledging juniors. One of the things we found was that those who pledged later didn't encounter burn-out of those who had been around for a while.

Disclaimer: I'm not saying that all campuses should look at this.

My campus was that way too. It does really mess with chapter size though and makes total irrelevant, to an extent.

I'm a bit confused - how would that make total irrelevant? Because of a higher turnover rate (three years instead of four)? Usually I can figure out what people mean, but my brain is muddled today.

I know where I went the chapter sizes were all over the place. It had nothing to do - well, little to do, with chapter strength. Graduation rates are no problem if you consistently take the same mix, but if in year 1 you take 20 sophomores and 25 freshmen, and then in year 2 you take 10 sophomores and 35 freshmen and then year 3 you take 5 juniors, 15 sophomores, and 25 freshmen, etc etc

You took 45 each year, but your loss to graduation is all over the place. So, total is relatively meaningless. You can be way over total just because you didn't lose a lot to graduation, or way under total because you lost a ton. It just gets messy. Total is no longer an indication of how your past recruitments have gone or your initiation rate or membership retention.

I know at my school, all of the strong chapters had between 150-200 members, and the chapter with 150 wasn't necessarily a weaker chapter than the one with 200, or vice versa. So, if total was 165 and you had 150, it didn't necessarily mean you were a struggling chapter. That's what I meant.

Gotchya - that makes sense. Thanks for explaining!

This makes complete sense, and I think I'd like a Greek system like that a lot.

But at a school where most groups regarded as "successful" are relatively the same size and there's little COB, it's a big risk to graduate too many at once.

This discussion is why I love a separate Upperclassmen Quota. It eliminates the possibility of PNM being discriminated against due to year in school. I'm not saying this happened here. I don't know UGA's campus culture well enough nor this particular PNM to speculate on anything.

Prior to Bama adopting the separate quota it was nearly impossible for sophomore to get a bid. She might as well not waste her time and registration fee. Considering I was a sophomore pledge from a campus where this was no big deal, it pained me to see so many fabulous women released simply because of their class standing. Nothing I said could change this mindset. I celebrated when Bama adopted an Upperclassmen quota.

I should point out that the chapter houses at my school tended to sleep fewer members (mine slept 66) so having upperclassmen didn't prevent you from filling your house, which is a huge consideration on other campuses.

Class year is also looked at as $$ contribution. Let's say your dues are $1000/year.

If you pledge a freshman, that person is bringing $4000 to the sorority before you have to "replace" them, while the sophomore is contributing $3000.

Late to the party as I've been away all day...but I'm heeeeere!

I propose that whenever a HM posts about DD, we need the OTW sig to pop-up. Kind of like, "Gotcha".

Do upperclassmen not live in the houses?

First, as a UGA grad I like the way Alabama does it giving a separate quota to upperclassman so the sororites will pledge. I think having older girls in a pledge class can help the younger ones. Once again I think each sorority on campus has there own way of deciding who can live in the house. In my sorority the 2008 pledge class will have priority to live in the house no matter their year. Some sororites require their officers to live in the house others don't. When you have a pledge class in excess of 60 there will be some in that pledge class that will never be able to live in the house which I think is sad because of lack of space. Usually these are the girls that are least active and need to live in the house.

They're the only ones who live in, but when you can only sleep 66 and you have 150-200, you need to have a lot live out as well.

Our house only slept in the thirties! I CANNOT IMAGINE sleeping in a house with 65 other girls...30-something was enough to drive me crazy at times!

1 - Maybe, but she did have 12 solidly on her "very
interested in" list going in. She was cut by all but one after second round.

2 - Always possible but highly doubtful.

3 - Agree, but the hit parade continues in college (3.9 is college gpa, HS was 4.3, leadership positions in several organizations, etc). "I love Athens!" was all I heard everytime I talked to her.

4 - Glad you put quotes around perfect. I think this would be more believable had she not been cut so severely so early. A 10 minute visit only confirms your predisposition.

I appreciate the attempts at answering what I guess was my true question, the one about sophomores. Some of them have validity but I do think that they are short-sighted when compared to what is missed by so easily dismissing this (or these) girls. No easy solution here but I am troubled by it. Never seemed to be a problem "back in the day".

I understand that there will never be any true answer to what happened. We had talked about what could happen before she went, I just never thought this really would. "Trust the process, you'll end up where you belong" was the mantra repeated over and over. I now feel like the general telling a mom that the battle went as planned and we won, So sorry your son got killed. Luckily, this young lady will be fine. Hurt but she will recover. I doubt, however, I can ever be as enthusiastic about trusting the process again. This was a train wreck.

I still think that something else had to have been going on. I know a lot of sophomores who rushed at a lot of SEC schools and they sometimes got shut out of the best houses (which I think otherwise they could have gotten in at), but they all got bids somewhere.

So are you saying that your daughter did not maximize her options? What I read is that there were 12 groups she would consider which leaves 5 that she would not? If she refused invitations from those 5 then there is not going to be an answer to your questions that you are going to like.

I know some colleges don't have houses only lodges, but for the ones that do I think living in the house is the best experience I ever had. Back in the day we lived in the house for 2 years because the houses were large and the chapters smaller ( late 1970) You can live in an apartment after you get out of school, but only one time in your life can you live in house. If you don't want to do it why join a sorority? The thing that has amazed me is the number of parents that pay for their daughter to live in the house and then rent an apartment for them. As a Mother why wouldn't you want your daughter to live in the house with a House Mother (no curfew) that allows no alcohol, smoking or boys in the rooms. I know some parents say they can't study, but there are quiet hours and study rooms better than the dorms.

God, no kidding, big co-sign. I haven't heard an explanation why she was rushing as a sophomore either. If she didn't have a 'good reason' for not rushing as a freshman, couldn't that have hurt her too?

THANK YOU for saying that. Not to trivialize any mother's pain if her very close daughter doesn't get into a sorority, but the analogy really went too far there.

Is the OP a mom or a dad? I immediately thought Sigma Nu, but I know the snake's referenced by Sigma Kappa as well.

I was not under the impression that the OP was even the PNM's parent.

The OP doesn't actually say this is her daughter in either of her two posts. It could be her aunt, grandmother, close family friend, older bio. sister...

Oh, woops, I saw "snakealum" and immediately assumed it was a male and a Sigma Nu. Alum. But I agree, I never read him (her?) describe the person in question as a daughter, but there's obviously some close tie there. (maybe it is an SK alumna that wrote a rec?)

One scenario that I have seen happen is this: let's say a very qualified upperclasswoman is rushing at a competitive school with five chapters: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Eta. Alpha, Beta and Gamma are competitive chapters and Delta and Eta are less competitive. After round #1, each woman has to narrow it down to 3 chapters. Based on her outstanding resume, grades, etc. she may be invited back to Alpha, Beta and Gamma for the next round. Therefore she drops Delta and Eta. For the next round, however, Alpha, Beta and Gamma decide cut the vast majority of upperclasswomen and our PNM is one of them. She has no bid. Delta and Eta may have been extremely excited to have her.

While obviously the new release figure methods and upperclasswomen quotas help eliminate the chance of this happening I think this could be one way that an amazing upperclasswoman receives no bid. It's a very simplified example but I think it gets my point across.

Oh ok, didn't see that. My original comment still holds though. War and recruitment are incomparable.