"Best" Colleges and their Greek Systems

[Low C Sharp]

If it's only 10% of the school (and the "old money contingent at that") I think they'd be pretty easy to ignore if you didn't care about them

That's exactly right. And it's less than 10% of the school -- it's around 10% of the eligible students (they are upperclassman-only at both Harvard and Yale). The Yale ones don't have social events at all; they are solely for members. At Harvard, the old-money ones operate the same way: a drinking club for members, closed doors, no guests. The ones that have parties with guests are basically just local frats and not so hard to get into. They are strongly associated with certain sports teams, just like frats at most campuses.

Re: the silliness of a selective, elite institution believing in an egalitarian social scene: a lot of people think that competition belongs in some arenas and not in others. Anyone who applies to HYP is inherently agreeing to be judged on academic achievement, extracurricular involvement, and diverse life experience. It doesn't mean that they want to be judged based on looks, popularity, social connections, and being the life of the party. Realistically, that's what GLO selection is about when you're selecting from the HYP student body: everyone is an excellent student, ambitious, talented, a leader, etc. Students compete to get into those schools; once there, they compete with one another to lead orchestras and publications and service groups; they compete to get into Yale Law and Hopkins Med; when it comes time to socialize, they want to chill out for a change and not worry about who's who.

Re: the fact that Theta is at all 3 of HYP: I know we don't like to talk about tiers here, but it's the "hot," socially elite group at all 3, too, and has chapters at all the other Ivies except Dartmouth, where its chapter went local.

The embarrassment about sorority membership that you find at HYP, and sometimes at Brown/Columbia, is nonexistent at Dartmouth and Cornell. Penn is in the middle; sororities are pretty cool for freshman women and totally uncool for seniors.

Re: tech schools: Caltech groups students into houses where you live/eat/party together, like Harvard, Yale, and Rice do. Schools that do this typically have much lower interest in Greek life. MIT does not, which explains the thriving Greek life there vs. none at Caltech.
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Park Royal 2 Condominium

[Miriverite]

Originally Posted by Low C Sharp

Re: tech schools: Caltech groups students into houses where you live/eat/party together, like Harvard, Yale, and Rice do. Schools that do this typically have much lower interest in Greek life. MIT does not, which explains the thriving Greek life there vs. none at Caltech.

I'm sure there are definitely areas of some of our dorms that could contest that For example, certain halls in our East Campus dorm are so close that they're practically a frat. In fact, the 2nd West hall even calls themselves "Pi Tau Zeta" (a Greekification of their nickname, Putz). It certainly is true, however, that most GLO members at MIT come from the west side of campus, where dorms are much bigger and less bonded as a group.

re: Theta, it's also seen as one of the "top tier" sororities at MIT as well, interestingly.

[aephi alum]

Originally Posted by Miriverite

I'm sure there are definitely areas of some of our dorms that could contest that For example, certain halls in our East Campus dorm are so close that they're practically a frat. In fact, the 2nd West hall even calls themselves "Pi Tau Zeta" (a Greekification of their nickname, Putz). It certainly is true, however, that most GLO members at MIT come from the west side of campus, where dorms are much bigger and less bonded as a group.

re: Theta, it's also seen as one of the "top tier" sororities at MIT as well, interestingly.

That's definitely true - every dorm has its own personality, and often floors/entries/halls within a dorm will have different personalities.

Back in my day, we had dorm rush. You got a temporary room and then you went and visited all the dorms, met upperclass residents, took dorm tours, etc., then ranked the dorms in order of preference and got matched. Once you got matched, in most cases you then went through floor/entry/hall rush. (I believe freshmen now have to rank order their dorm choices before arriving on campus, but they still go through floor rush - Miriverite, correct me if I'm wrong.)

What made this all the more fun was that, in my day, dorm rush happened at the same time as FSILG rush. If you were a man checking out fraternities and/or ILGs, or a woman interested in ILGs, you really had to budget your time to make sure you checked out the dorms just in case you didn't get a bid you wanted to accept. If you were a woman interested only in NPC sororities, you had enough time outside scheduled rush parties to check out the dorms, and of course, if you weren't interested in greek life at all, you had lots of time.

And I don't think you can really have a meaningful discussion about tiers when there are only six sororities, one of which fills a niche market.

[littleowl33]

Originally Posted by AnotherKD

Amazing how it seems like Theta has a presence at the schools that have about 3 sororities- honestly, it makes them seem stronger in my eyes, though I don't know how on point that is. But to me, it's impressive that they are at the "top 3" schools, plus many others on that list, and not many other sororities are.

Just noticed this too - good for them! Kappa is pretty well represented (we're also at HYP and unless I've miscounted on irishpipes' list, out of the 25 schools listed, 21 have greek life and we're active at 16 and inactive at 1) but Theta still has us beat (active at 18 and inactive at 3). Pi Phi is up there, too. I remember them mentioning this quite a bit at their JHU extension presentation, not in a snobby way at all, but more of a "we understand this kind of campus environment and we know how to build a successful chapter here."

Originally Posted by Low C Sharp

Re: the fact that Theta is at all 3 of HYP: I know we don't like to talk about tiers here, but it's the "hot," socially elite group at all 3, too, and has chapters at all the other Ivies except Dartmouth, where its chapter went local.

Can't really speak to this at HYP, but I can say they were a very "in demand" group when they were at JHU, too.

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by Drolefille

Is this still the case at some of the schools we're talking about here?

No.

[Drolefille]

Originally Posted by MysticCat

No.

Thanks Although I wonder if some of the perception of Greeks vs. senior societies today comes from that past.