How much are your fees and when do you pay them?
 

How much difference financially is living in the house and living outside the house?

Do you pay monthly, anually, or by semester?

this sort if information varies from chapter to chapter and from campus to campus.

Why are you asking? Are you a current member of a fraternity/sorority looking to re-do your fee system? Are you someone thinking about rushing a GLO and curious about costs? People could help you out more if you gave more information, because right now your question is too general to really answer.

im trying to compare. Mine is 2500 each semester to live in the house.

Ah....you wont get that answer from me . that's classified.

I can only speak for Kappa, but it varies from chapter to chapter depending on housing status and how big the chapter budget is.

In general, most sororities have a new member fee the first semester, an initiation fee, and an annual fee for all members. These types of fees are generally paid to the sorority headquarters and sometimes a fee is paid to the local Panhellinic.

For Kappa, house fees are set by the local house board and social/operational dues are determined by how big the budget is divided by the number of members in the chapter.

Asking about the financial obligation is very important when potential members go through recruitment.

If you search the websites of most large universities, you'll find a greek page. On many of these I have seen the costs of room and board for sororities. It is important information to have and seems readily available if you do a little searching. U Texas, for one, has it, as does UW-Madison.

Yeah, I don't think anyone is going to be willing to say, "I spend $XXXX amount of dollars per semester" or anything.
General thought: obviously it is going to cost more to live in-house as opposed to out-of-house, because in-house you're paying rent, whereas out-of-house you're paying that rent to some other landlord.
But really, you're not going to get anyone to tell you a specific dollar amount, even though you seem to have no problems sharing that information with us.

I don't think it's supposed to be some HUGE secret! It is a tool that helps many PNM's decide if they are able to join! This link gives a very rough breakdown of all Texas colleges and expenses. It's amazing to see how much variation there is!

aj

I know chapters in my own state vary anywhere between $60/month and $600/month. Of course what services the chapter provides for that sum differ greatly.

Yup! The Wisconsin Greek website is www.uwgreek.com and if you visit the pages of individual sororities, most of them have information on how much dues are, if not a complete breakdown of first semester dues, second semester dues, in and out of house dues, and room and board if you're living in. My sorority is one of the only ones that doesn't have that info up, but I don't think anybody would have a problem if I said that we pay around $850 for first semester dues and about $600 for every semester thereafter. Living in costs you $2900-ish a semester all told, and that includes room, board and dues. You can choose to pay either all of it at the beginning at the semester, or get a payment plan and pay every month.

Although some of the figures on the website are misleading. For example, it might be a surprise to see that Gamma Phi Beta's new member dues are only $50, when most of the sororoities range from $500-1000. But what they're not taking into account is the fact that you're not just paying the new member dues, you're also paying the out of house dues (which are around $450, I think). But you can usually figure this out by comparing the numbers -- so it's a good resource anyway.

I really don't think it's a huge secret. At UCF during Day 3 of Recruitment, each chapter goes over their finances with the PNMs. Every house has a sheet they breaks down their finances between national dues, local dues, new member fee, social fee, meal plan fee, etc. It also includes how much it will be to live in the house.
My dues were about $1100 per semester to not live in the house. Our dues were the more expensive ones on campus as we're the only sorority with a meal plan (but you get a home cooked meal Monday through Friday....it ends up being cheaper since you don't have to go to the grocery store or worry about eating Ramen noodles everyday....through out my college experience, I had a healthy lunch and dinner every single day). The meal plan was about $600 of our dues so, if you didn't factor in the meal plan, our dues were only $500.

I really don't understand why this would be secretive. But we have room/board that goes to the college, they own our house. room/board is 2600/2800 respectively and then dues are $150-200 for the first full semester you are initiated and every semester after that. Plus NM fee is i dunno like 140? I honestly have not a clue, it has been so long.

We don't get money from our house like the fraternitites, but a bunch of us eat on fraternity meal plans so we help them out w/their costs. grrr, we should soooo get a cut!

Dues are due at the beginning of the semester, unless you get a payment plan approved by exec board, then you pay on that schedual.

Our dues aren't secret... we tell PNM at Recruitment.

when I pledged in 99, our dues were $500 something, which included our badge, new member fee to National...

if you didnt live in the house, it was $295 a semester
If you lived in the house, you paid $195 a semester, on top of your rent, which varied depending on which room you chose.

We didnt have a meal plan.

and people still complained about only $300 a semester! and this was only 2 years ago! Compared to other schools (and some chapters at my school) we got off easy! No wonder we were always poor! :(