Greek System Sizes -- Is U of Illinois Largest?

[lovespink88]

Originally Posted by ree-Xi

Wow!!

Thirty-six is a lot of sororities, and 39,000 undergrads is a crazy amount of students. How competitive is it the situation overall? For example, if a girl really wants to join a sorority - for the sake of argument, ANY sorority - is there a "home" for most girls who want to be part of a sisterhood? I am guessing that the 20 NPC chapters have the most members, collectively, but given the existance of 2 NPHC, 5 Latina, and 4 "other" sororities, is it likely that a girl looking for a sisterhood will find it?

Okay, I'll try to answer this as best as I can, but keep in mind I joined a colony at Illinois as a junior, and therefore I only had one recruitment on "the other side", so I'm definitely not the authority on our recruitment. This is just what I have observed.

U of I's recruitment is competitive just based on the fact that so many girls rush. However, it's not like competitive southern schools where you absolutely need recs for every house to even stand a chance (or at least this is what I've gathered from GC). I rushed as a sophomore (I did drop out--I knew nothing about the system, and didn't know my bad GPA was going to be a problem. So when I received heavy cuts I took it as a sign that it wasn't meant to be and just dropped out) I was under the impression that many of the girls in my Gamma Chi group didn't know much about the system either. Therefore, I'd assume many girls don't have recs going into recruitment. Also, AFAIK, we didn't receive a ton of recs compared to the number of girls rushing this past year.

According to this website, http://www.odos.uiuc.edu/greek/membe...lenicStats.asp, out of 1207 PNMs that rushed, only 1 was released from all chapters. Likewise 73% of PNMs received bids. All of the girls I know who did not join sororities either dropped out while they still had invites, or received a bid and did not pledge.

So to answer your question, is there an opportunity for most girls who want to be part of A sisterhood, then I would say yes. If more PNMs stuck it out through recruitment, I think more would end up in chapters.

One really great thing about our system is that we offer a variety of chapters. There chapters range from about 10 to close to 200. There's also social sororities that appeal to certain interests. For example, 4H is a sorority on our campus. So, I think the variety helps in allowing PNMs to find their home too.