[BigRedBeta]

Impressive post by firehouse. Lots of good stuff in there that I definitely agree with. That distinction between external and internal factors is important.

I'd argue though that it's always a campus specific question (like everything usually is when it comes to greek life), and there are somethings, even at large greek schools which are on the "internal" list but matter a great deal.

I think what defines those key elements is where can chapters compete to be the best. Regular competition in which it's a struggle from semester to semester can make the relative importance of things shoot through the roof. On the flipside, one chapter's continued dominance can completely de-emphasize one of the main criteria to irrelevance.

On my campus, the one chapter without a house (and thus no limiting factor on the number of guys they can manage) has dominated intramurals since they rechartered. The main sports (football, softball, etc) are always competitive among every one, but this chapter (which is automatically 3rd tier because of their lack of a house) spends so much time getting points in sports like ping pong and water polo that it's never a question they're going to win the overall title. It's made the fraternity system as a whole pretty apathetic towards intramurals - certainly people want to win because that's more fun than losing but there aren't any super intense rivalries. Further, it's so rare to have a varsity athlete join a fraternity on my campus, that when does rush, it's a complete anomaly and conveys nothing to the chapter (in fact for the most part the most recent athletes to rush have always joined second tier houses).

In a similar vein, the Betas at KU have so completely dominated grades over the past 50 years (winning something like 95 of the last 100 semesters) and similarly doing the same for the overall IM title over the last 20, that most KU fraternities don't spend a whole lot of effort worrying about how well they're going to do in those areas.

On the other hand, there's been a long standing competition for grades on my campus, and it's definitely used as a selling point to rushees. The competition has pushed the all-fraternity GPA to nearly 3.2 (compared to below 3.0 for the all-men's average), and usually the winning chapter has a GPA of greater than 3.4...not something the sororities care about, but rushees do.