A Stormy Recruitment: UCF Fall '08

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So I have decided to share my recruitment story from Fall 2008 at UCF a.k.a the week Hurricane Fay hit!

A little background about myself, I’m freshman from a small beachy town in Florida. I went to a private school and a lot of my friends including myself deciding on rushing when we went to college. My parents really encouraged me to rush as well. My dad was an ATO when he was in college and my mom didn’t go to a 4-year school but she always said she would have rushed if she had the chance to go to a school with Greek life.

I chose to go to UCF because it was my favorite school in Florida. It was a hard decision to make at first; I visited many different schools in and out of state (UF, FSU, USF, Rollins, College of Charleston, South Carolina). Ultimately, it came down to FSU vs. UCF in state. FSU had many plusses for me, it was your typical “college town” and had an amazing Greek life. I felt its negatives for me outweighed the positives though Tallahassee seemed like sort of a dead town to me and I didn’t like how the campus was layed out at all. Not to mention it was a good 6 hour drive from home and is absolutely FREEZING in the winter (I’m from south Florida and anything below 70 degrees is cold for me!). I then received a very nice scholarship from South Carolina and I was now torn between South Carolina and UCF. After a few visits though, South Carolina’s negatives were beginning to match up with FSU’s so I chose UCF! It’s the perfect school for me, I absolutely love Orlando and everything it has to offer, the campus is new and so beautiful, and its only an hour and a half from home…I couldn’t be happier!

Over the summer I had attained recommendations for all the sororities at UCF with the help of my high school’s guidance counselor who was also Greek and has amazing connections! I heard about some of the sororities at UCF, some good things some bad things, but I was definitely going into rush with an open mind and I did not have any favorites to start off.

So I went off to college and left home in mid August, I couldn’t wait to start my new life as a college girl! For those of you who aren’t familiar with UCF recruitment, it takes place the week before school starts which I loved because it didn’t interfere with the first few weeks of school, which I knew were going to be hectic enough!

At UCF, rush kicks off on a Monday night with an informational meeting called “Greek Forum”. This is where we get to meet our Rho Gamma’s and the rest of the girls in our group. I remember stressing over my outfit even though I knew it didn’t matter at all. I decided on white shorts with a yellow top and my white wedges. I remember I was a few minutes late so I was running from my car to the building and it had begun to rain (the first signs of FAY!) and one of the girls (who I’m guessing was a Rho Gamma) was holding the door open for me and she flashed me the biggest smile and seemed so happy that I was there so that really began to calm my nerves down.

I walked into this gym and went up to the registration table to get my Rho Gamma’s “name”. There were SO many girls in the gym already sitting in their Rho Gamma groups so I had to walk through all of them to try and find mine, which I finally did. At first glance she seemed really nice and pretty and so were all the other girls in my group. We went through introductions and some of the girls I could tell were not into the whole recruitment process as the rest of us were, they were even asking our Rho Gamma how they would “drop out” because they already felt it wasn’t for them. The Greek Life President then got up to speak and she informed us that 1000 girls were going through rush which shocked me because I heard that UCF wasn’t as competitive as FSU or UF. Overall, Greek Forum was very informative and I couldn’t wait to get the week started! The next morning would be UCF Day, which was the most informal day of recruitment.

Wow so that was a lot longer then I had expected! I will post all about UCF day next time and the “names” I’ll be giving each sorority! I hope you guys like it so far…stay tuned!