Sororities or similar organisations in Germany?

[Tulip86]

Good point about the academics.. the universities are set up very differently coursewise. You will find sororities and fraternities much like the US ones all over the Netherlands and Belgium (and a few in France or the UK), but mostly students just keep academics and social life separate as described by psusue. I think the difference is indeed in the living at home thing.. Where I live most do live in student-housing and fraternities and sororities have been around for ages.. other countries.. just the very elite ones, that only few people join.

[AnotherKD]

*swerve* I still agree with being disappointed with the lack of "school spirit"... I got a higher degree in Europe, and while I would love to wear a sweatshirt or something else with even the school name on it, my only choice would be to have it embroidered myself. Which is lame. It's been almost 10 years and I still am sad that there's nothing cool and university-sponsored that I can buy with the school's name on it!

[uf_anna]

Thanks for your answers again!

I have also lives abroad in Italy- although I did not go to college there, so I have quite the comparison here. Believe me, Italy still has more spirit to organisations / schools than Germany does.


A good point you mentioned though is that "school is school and that is it". People don't even associate the possibility of having fun with their school or school at all. And it is really true that they are not that open towards meeting new people (still depends on where exactly you are).

And our school system is - WAS still different, you could never graduate with 23 here. You would have gotten out of the Gymnasium (dont laugh- really - that's the highest version of "high school" we have here, which you must complete in order to go to college) when you were like mostly 19 or 20.


A lot of people take a gap year abroad or something and then started university. Saying university because there wasn't a distinction between undergrad/grad. You were in for the whole thing once you started. Only 5-7 year degrees. So, you were about to graduate with 25-27. Anything younger than 25 would have been young, actually.

NOW that is changed and we have undergrad/grad and Gymnasium is one year shorter.

But I don't see how that would have stopped people from joining, it's just more time that they could have been active?

And yes, the pretty much non-existing campus life might indeed be another reason.
But I am not sure that there wouldn't be enough people interested. The thing is, you would need to change one's attitude towards extracurricular activities and philantrophy over here as well... not "cool", believe it or not.

Really sad.