This might get kind of long, so bear with me.
I’m writing this as a true outsider: I am not Greek, my collegiate alma mater does not have and has never had Greek life, and honestly I barely gave sororities a single thought in my entire life until my beloved niece (I’ll call her A) was accepted last spring to her dream college--a huge, western, state flagship university far away from where we iive--and decided she wanted to go Greek.
At first we were all somewhat bewildered at this; none of the women in our family or close circle of friends are Greek. But A was determined, and I was determined to help her because I am a doting aunt, and also because I’m so proud of her for pushing herself to get into this university and being brave enough to go so far away, to a school and part of the country where she literally knew no one. So I started to research this whole sorority thing, and I found Greekchat! I read everything--stories, advice, and any specific information on A’s university’s recruitment that I could find. Talk about a deep dive: I learned all about “recruitment” and “recommendations” and “tiers” and “tent talk” and “bid day”--it was like an entirely new language. But I cannot express how grateful I am for the wealth of knowledge that is here and everyone’s willingness to share. There was obviously a lot to learn, so for anyone else who is in this situation, here are some of the most important lessons:
GET RECS: the very first post I stumbled across on Greekchat was about how A’s university is one where you “absolutely positively” need recs. At first I didn’t even know what that meant! Like I said, no one in our immediate circle has any NPC connections at all. But we figured it out and followed all the advice on here about reaching out: I talked to my friends’ friends, current and former coworkers, and anyone else I could think of. There were two positive outcomes from this process: we got recs for almost every house (and multiple recs for some!!) AND I learned a lot about what my peers got out of their sororities, which made me feel really good about A’s choice and what she’d hopefully get out of this experience.
BE PREPARED AND AUTHENTIC: My niece is smart, engaged, passionate about her interests, and was a leader both academically and socially in high school. She is also absolutely gorgeous (obviously I’m biased but for real, she’s a stunner) and I knew she’d present well during recruitment. But from this site, I learned that the key was understanding how to get all that wonderfulness across in the chaos of recruitment, especially for a girl with no prior connections. I wanted her to think about her reasons for wanting to join a sorority: finding community in a very far-away and unfamiliar place; opportunities for leadership; and making friends with like-minded girls.
HAVE AN OPEN MIND: this one was huge. A is fairly level-headed but she’s also an 18-year-old girl, and I wanted her to try to rise above the gossip, impressions from Insta, and everything else that wasn’t focused on actually meeting the sisters and making her own decisions based on those conversations. It helped enormously that she ended up with a great RC who she talked to quite a bit throughout the process.
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