[ladygreek]

Rudey,
I see where you are coming from. But to some people Howard is the best for a lot of reasons other than the general perception of the quality of the school.

For example, my daughter turned down Stanford with a scholarship to go to Howard without one. Why? Because she was born and raised in MN, and we both felt strongly that she needed Howard for reasons that are hard to articulate on here.

Has that hurt her in her career? No. She was highly recruited in her field after undergrad, later went on to grad school at a PWI, and again heavily recruited. She is now on the fast track in a Fortune 100 company. A lot of it is due to her experiences at Howard.

When she rushed Delta, she was turned down on her first try. She knew that having a 3.5 GPA, etc. was not going to automatically get her in the door. That was because of the 200+ in her rush group over 150 at 3.2s and above. And they all, too, had stellar community service and leadership. And at the time, the school set a pledge line limit of 50. So she knew she had to do things to rise to the top of the prospects. (And no, I am not talking about illegal things.) She did those things and was accepted on her second try.

I think this is to what CarolinaCutie is referring.

But it is also true to smaller campuses. A chapter doesn't have to accept anyone if they don't want to. So even the smaller chapters go for the best of the applicants. And if the whole applicant pool is mediocre then they can decide to not take a pledge line at all.