Fratty North?

[AOEforme]

I'm from the Big 10 also, and I agree things are much different. Our chapter took a trip to Georgia to visit another chapter for their formal and it's a much different style of Greek. Ours is much more laid-back and less formal.... Which can be a good or bad thing depending on what you want. (For instance, our Exec Board proposed doing all Formal Meetings instead of two formal and one semi and one informal and faced a lot of resistance from some girls and support from the others)

My experience with the Big 10 is also that you can't really tell if a person is Greek or not unless they wear letters. Overall, there are plenty of GDIs who dress extremely classy on a day to day basis. And the "Coastie" nickname took off on our campus to describe the dress of some of the Greek girls, and it describes a scrub look, rather than a dress and pearls.

Really, with the fraternities on our campus, the "fratty"-ness depends on which you pledge. Some are really close-knit brotherhoods where the men wear suits regularly and have that more country-club feel. Others are much more loose and laid back where the guys spent a majority of their time with people outside the fraternity and live in sweatpants. They both do very well, because different guys (looking for different things out of their GLO) pledge them.

Bottom-line: It won't be the same as what you find in the SEC. But that doesn't mean it won't be terrific.