Hi, I’m an incoming freshman curious about Greek life.
While I wasn’t considering joining a sorority when I visited for the Admitted Students Weekend, now I do think I may rush in October. I wanted to know what each of the sororities are known for, what kind of crowds of girls they tend to draw, their reputations around campus, etc. Is there even a prestige factor associated with any of them – or is U of C too small of a school for that?
And before people begin replying that there aren’t any reputations, from what I gathered during my overnight visit, sorority reputations definitely do exist, I just didn’t press for that information at the time, which I regret.
Anyway, thank you so much for your help! 
Assuming you’re talking about the four panhellic sororities (and not the smaller ethnic-interest sororities or interest frats that are open to women like APO, Alpha Kappa Psi, etc.) rush is coordinated between all of them and you don’t get much of a choice of which one you end up receiving a bid from. You can’t only rush certain sororities. In that light I think there’s very little point worrying about their specific reputations. I won’t deny that they have reputations (like Greek life as a whole) but I think they should be taken with a huge grain of salt (like Greek life as a whole). Prestige-wise, they really are the same since there are so few of them and they all rush together.
@HydeSnark True, but you do have to rank the sororities in order of preference when you rush, and when you are given an offer by one of the chapters, you can choose whether to accept or deny it…so I do believe that the personality of the sorority still factors into the decision.
@wuthering Well, that is the point of rushing - by the end you should have some idea of how you want to rank the sororities (just as they should have some idea of who they want to extend bids to). Sure, rush is hectic, compressed, and not always perfectly representative of life in the sorority, but it’s your best chance of forming impressions and certainly more useful than stereotypes told to you by random people on the internet. You’ll actually be meeting the women in the sororities and you can decide for yourself.
I would strongly encourage you to consider staying independent a year and rushing your second year. By then you will have a much better idea of whether Greek life is right for you.