So, after seeing all the other Recruitment stories on here I wanted to share mine! I went through recruitment in Spring of 2007, so here's the full story... no need to wait for updates
My University is pretty small. We only have four Panhellenic sororities! There are also four local sororities, but they're not well-known around campus and they're really small. None of the sororities have houses, so all the recruitment events are held in rooms around campus.
I'll call the four Panhellenic groups
Spades,
Hearts,
Diamonds and
Clubs.
Clubs is the oldest and largest on our campus. They're known as the hottest girls on campus, but also, to be honest, the meanest. I heard they haze their pledges and have been on probation a lot.
Diamonds is the second oldest at the school and third largest. They're known as the party girls! I'm not into that too much, so I was worried they were too "wild" for me.
Spades is the third oldest and second largest. They're known as the down-to-earth girls, but their sisterhood isn't very close and a lot of them don't know each other.
Hearts is the youngest chapter and by the smallest. For a long time they were known as the "nerdy" sorority, but the sweetest girls who are all close friends. They have probably the best national rep of all the groups, though.
Going into recruitment, I didn't know much about the sororities on campus besides what I had heard from other freshmen. Greek Life isn't really big at my school - only about 20% of students go Greek and it wasn't really on my radar. All I knew was that my RA was in Spades and she was a really fun girl, so when I registered (at the last minute!) I thought Spades was my first choice.
The first night of Recruitment, my first party was
Hearts. As we went in, they seemed really excited to see us and were cheering and singing. I had a great time - though the girls weren't the hottest girls on campus, they seemed really sweet and fun and it was obvious that they were really friends. All the girls I talked to were super excited and I really liked their shirts. As I was leaving the party, though, other PNMs were saying bad things about Hearts - that they were the "worst" chapter on campus. Though I liked Hearts, I was worried by what the other girls said.
My next party was
Spades, and I was amazed by how big their chapter was! They were much bigger than Hearts - at Hearts there were two freshmen to a sister, but at Spades there were two sisters to a freshman. The girls were upbeat, but the sister I talked to was a senior who didn't seem like she liked me very much. She was kind of a hippie and didn't seem "into" the whole recruitment thing. Nonetheless, I tried to impress her by being really sweet and upbeat, and admittedly name-dropped my RA. I never got "bumped", which I thought was odd.
After Spades, I went to
Diamonds. The Diamonds seemed nice, but aloof. I liked them, but nothing stood out to me. They all seemed very pretty and glamorous, so I was a little intimidated!
My last party of the night was
Clubs. The Clubs were all very blonde, very tanned and very pretty. Unlike the Diamonds, though, they seemed very interested in me and sweet. Nonetheless, I was still stuck on the stories I had heard about them being fake and bitchy, and I was cautious.
After the first night we didn't rank officially, but I still liked
Spades the best (even though I didn't have a great experience in the recruitment room). I liked
Diamonds, too, but didn't really feel a connection with them. I felt really comfortable and happy with
Hearts, but was hung up on what the other PNMs had said. I was pretty intimidated by
Clubs and what I had heard before about them being bitchy.