Why is Rush so Cut-throat on the Sororities' End at Big Greek Schools?

KillarneyRose · #1 04-09-2003, 11:26 AM

It seems that rush competition between the sororities at schools that have strong Greek systems (LSU, UF, Alabama come to mind, among others) is unbelievably cut-throat.

Often, so many young women rush that a couple hundred of them don't receive bids. From what I understand, even legacies and women with multiple recs get cut. So it doesn't make sense to me that the sororities fight each other so hard when there are plenty of rushees to go around.

Could someone who's "been there" or is otherwise knowledgable about the process maybe try and explain a bit? I'm very interested in this because it is so foreign from my college experience at a place with a small greek system!

Thanks

xok85xo · #2 04-09-2003, 01:00 PM

well, i'm not from a big competetive recruitment school, but could it have to do with the fact that yes, while there are a lot of girls going through, there is that lovely thing we call quota that allows them to only take so many of those wonderful girls..

FuzzieAlum · #3 04-09-2003, 01:24 PM

But quota is based on the number of girls going through rush.

carnation · #4 04-09-2003, 01:39 PM

Because it's a seller's market--most of the sororities don't have to do a thing to have hundreds of girls yearning to belong to them. The only time some of them have to put forth any extra effort is when they REALLY want a certain girl and they're afraid a rival might get her. I remember watching one sorority in particular rushing this girl really hard because she was going to be Orange Bowl Queen in December. Made the rest of us feel reaaal welcome as we watched 6 members trying to talk to her at once while we were left alone.

They got her but she flunked out at the end of fall semester and was never initiated, LOL.

breathesgelatin · #5 04-09-2003, 01:50 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by carnation
Because it's a seller's market--most of the sororities don't have to do a thing to have hundreds of girls yearning to belong to them. The only time some of them have to put forth any extra effort is when they REALLY want a certain girl and they're afraid a rival might get her. I remember watching one sorority in particular rushing this girl really hard because she was going to be Orange Bowl Queen in December. Made the rest of us feel reaaal welcome as we watched 6 members trying to talk to her at once while we were left alone.

They got her but she flunked out at the end of fall semester and was never initiated, LOL.

Very true. In the south or at big Greek schools, girls go to school knowing what the top groups are and practically falling all over themselves to join those groups. The most popular sororities sometimes only have to put forth minimal recruitment effort.

madmax · #6 04-09-2003, 02:11 PM

If you crunched the numbers I think I could make the arguement that small schools are more competitive and more cut throat than large schools.

UF has 45,000 students. 15 NPC sororities and 4 NPHC sororities for a total of 19 sororities. SUNY Albany only has 12,000 students and the same number of sororities. Albany has more competition in my book.

FuzzieAlum · #7 04-09-2003, 02:16 PM

Nope - sorry, it's only more competitive if the girls try to go through rush!

madmax · #8 04-09-2003, 02:17 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by carnation
Because it's a seller's market--most of the sororities don't have to do a thing to have hundreds of girls yearning to belong to them. The only time some of them have to put forth any extra effort is when they REALLY want a certain girl and they're afraid a rival might get her. I remember watching one sorority in particular rushing this girl really hard because she was going to be Orange Bowl Queen in December. Made the rest of us feel reaaal welcome as we watched 6 members trying to talk to her at once while we were left alone.

They got her but she flunked out at the end of fall semester and was never initiated, LOL.

The sororities put in very little work and they have hundreds of girls that want to pledge. How does that make it cut-throat? Sellers want to be in a sellers market. Try being a seller in a buyers market and then you will see cut-throat.

breathesgelatin · #9 04-09-2003, 02:18 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by madmax
If you crunched the numbers I think I could make the arguement that small schools are more competitive and more cut throat than large schools.

UF has 45,000 students. 15 NPC sororities and 4 NPHC sororities for a total of 19 sororities. SUNY Albany only has 12,000 students and the same number of sororities. Albany has more competition in my book.

Nope... Doesn't work that way. Because it a) doesn't depend on the number of students, it depends on the number of rushees and b) quota is adjusted to the number of rushees, so at any school most of the women who rush should be placed.

Not saying that small schools don't have competitive rushes... Mine sure as heck does.

Just faulty reasoning.

Size has much less to do with it than culture.

For example, at my school tons more women could be placed than are--but they withdraw if they are cut from the two most popular sororities. Those are the only ones that they will even consider.

madmax · #10 04-09-2003, 03:10 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by breathesgelatin
Nope... Doesn't work that way. Because it a) doesn't depend on the number of students, it depends on the number of rushees and b) quota is adjusted to the number of rushees, so at any school most of the women who rush should be placed.

1. Quota = the number of PNMs/ number of sororities.
2. Quota absolutely can depend on the number of students. The larger school with more students will most likely have more girls go through rush resulting in a higher quota.
3. Some small schools actually have more sororities than large schools resulting in even smaller quota.

Question: When rush comes around which of the following senarios would everyone prefer?
A- You are at a school with 45,000 students and 19 sororities and 1000 PNMs with a quota of 52. According to Carnation, "most of the sororities don't have to do a thing to have hundreds of girls yearning to belong to them."

B- would you rather be at a school with 12,000 students, 19 sororities and only 100 PNMs and a quota of 5.2 and the sororities probably have to work their asses off just to get the 100 pnms to go through rush.

I would rather have A. B looks more cut-throat to me.

carnation · #11 04-09-2003, 03:12 PM

Breathesgelatin--same thing at most SEC schools! When I was at Auburn, most girls seemed to want only 6, maybe 8, of the 14 groups and would drop out of rush or transfer if they didn't get one of those. At Arkansas they wanted 4 of 9 and at Mississippi State, most were aiming for one certain group of the 9 although some girls would settle for 3 of the rest if the first cut them.

Maybe I should say that it's a seller's market for the "upper- and middle-tier" groups but usually, the other groups at the big Southern schools take at least half of quota--which could be 30-35 girls.

Another reason that it's cutthroat is that moms and alums are behind the scenes plotting to get their daughters or favored rushees into their groups. This can be a problem if there are more legacies than the chapter has spaces available (pretty common here) or if the alum club has a list of preferred pledges that clashes with the chapter's list.

Generally, both groups compromise since the chapter needs the alums' help.

ZTAngel · #12 04-09-2003, 03:20 PM

Yes, B would appear to be more cutthroat.

Here's the issue:

There might be 19 sororities and 1000 PNM's going through. What usually ends up happening is that 6 out of 19 of these sororities are the ones that almost every PNM wants to join. These top 6 don't really have to work as hard unless they're competing with each other over the same girl. Since these top 6 can get whoever they want, they end up cutting many of the PNM's. For many of the PNM's, if they get cut by a sorority they are die-hard for, they will drop out of recruitment. This is why rush is considered so cutthroat at these larger greek schools. The competition between the PNM's is big. They compete against one another to show these sorority sisters that they've got what it takes to be in their sorority. The bigger chapters on this campus always make quota while the "less popular" chapters struggle to make quota. It's a vicious cycle. Many times, PNM's will go through rush with their mind made up on what chapters they will join without giving the "less popular" sororities a chance. They will have a ton of recs and have their mother or grandmother who were once an XYZ visit the chapter and bring in pictures of their little legacy so that the sisters know who she is. Since there is only so many spots open for these top chapters, many girls who are cut wind up very disappointed.

carnation · #13 04-09-2003, 03:20 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by madmax

Question: When rush comes around which of the following senarios would everyone prefer?
A- You are at a school with 45,000 students and 19 sororities and 1000 PNMs with a quota of 52. According to Carnation, "most of the sororities don't have to do a thing to have hundreds of girls yearning to belong to them."

B- would you rather be at a school with 12,000 students, 19 sororities and only 100 PNMs and a quota of 5.2 and the sororities probably have to work their asses off just to get the 100 pnms to go through rush.

I would rather have A. B looks more cut-throat to me.

Madmax, you're looking at it as "in which schools are the sororities more desperate and therefore rushing dirtier to get members". We women are looking at it from the rushees' point of view because they're a lot more likely to get done dirty than the sororities are. It all depends on exactly what you want to know when you ask why rush is more cutthroat at certain schools.

I can find you a bunch more girls who were devastated by being rejected by their preferred group(s) than sororities who were crushed because their rush crushes didn't pledge. But no, I don't have the answer to that because if you increase quota, you hurt the smaller groups and sorority size can get unmanageably big.

KillarneyRose · #14 04-09-2003, 04:18 PM

Madmax,
Just wanted to clarify why I started this thread about sororities being cut-throat at the big greek schools

There's another thread in the Rush Forum about this fall's rush at the University of Florida, which is a big, competitive greek school where I would figure all the sororities could do well during rush.

A chapter of my sorority, Delta Zeta, colonized there last fall and, since we don't have a house for them yet, is going to be using one of the fraternities' house for rush. From the looks of that thread, there are members of other sororities at UF who are extremely worried that using this house for their parties will give Delta Zeta an unfair advantage. I was just wondering why they were getting upset when, from what I had understood, there were plenty of rushees for everyone at UF.

Thanks for reading!

aopinthesky · #15 04-09-2003, 04:20 PM

>>>Since these top 6 can get whoever they want, they end up cutting many of the PNM's<<<

A problem at some schools has also been that the top houses will keep PNM's, who they know or think they will eventually cut, until the very end, causing some PNM's to end up without a home. I know that Univ. of GA put some things into place last summer to force the larger houses to release girls earlier in the week to try and prevent some of this. Carnation knows exactly how that worked, I believe.