<p>My son will be attending UA in the fall and is intending to pledge a fraternity. Although I was in a fraternity at Bama in the early/mid 80’s, there are some questions that I have.</p>
<p>1) How much are the house bills per month for a typical fraternity? I’m sure the price has gone up dramatically since back in the day.</p>
<p>2) Every freshman has to purchase a meal plan. How does the University handle this if a kid pledges a fraternity and eats his meals at the house? Do they refund your meal plan?</p>
<p>3) I’m not going to say what fraternity I was in, but obviously they have fallen on hard times (self inflicted wounds). My son will be pledging somewhere else. What house tend to attrack Huntsville kids?</p>
<p>When you pledge your meal plan will be bumped down to what is called a “Greek 50”. your fraternity will give you info on this and how to get the refund (it is not a full refund…I think we got about $900 back).<br>
As far as cost goes…totally depends upon the fraternity. Those who have new houses will have a bigger bill (this is true for the 4 sororities that are building new houses as well! Our house bill to “live in” is going to almost double!). Yes…Old Row is also more …an average fraternity will cost you between $3000 and $4000 a semester but there are lots of “hidden costs” in fraternity life (not as many in a sorority).</p>
<p>Fraternity dues differ with each fraternity. Old Row such as Sigma Nu, Phi Gam, DKE (still must be from Mobile or New Orleans to get a bid), Beta, etc. are going to be more expensive. I’m from Huntsville and most of the people that I graduated with that went to Bama pledged Phi Gam or KA. A few of us went somewhere else.</p>
<p>you can actually go below the greek 50 to a no meal plan as a greek freshman, but they charge you 300 or so to do that. i figure it is probably better to just get the greek 50 then give them 300 for nothing.</p>
<p>MikeWozowski, I know of a few that weren’t from either of those places either. I should have said majority of them are from Mobile and New Orleans. It just seems like there are certain fraternities where they have more kids from a certain area.</p>
<p>ua2009 - thanks for the clarification. didn’t mean to be contrary, but when you said MUST be from … i knew that wasn’t quite the case.</p>
<p>is there a bid list for the fraternities like there is for the sororities? if so, that would answer the question of where the boys from huntsville go. wouldn’t it be better to join the group that was a best fit, though?</p>
<p>There is no fraternity bid list to my knowledge…</p>
<p>There are some houses that rely strongly on home town/ high school ties to recruit their pledge classes, to the extent that they will have the majority of their class sewn up before fall semester starts. When someone says ‘Boys from Huntsville go ABC’, it is because these boys are already KNOWN to active brothers from HS/church/sports/other activities. </p>
<p>My question to the OP is: does your son already know people in the chapters, if not from HS as you posted, then from any other activities in Huntsville? Church/sports/country club/ etc etc? </p>
<p>If you son is unknown then he will need to approach this the same way as an OOS student, by attending IFC preview weekend, contacting the rush chairs over the summer for invites to summer events, and finally via formal rush in the fall. As you’re in H/ville, it is easy for him to attend these events - easier than Connecticut for example! Several posters here have sons who successfully joined fraternities even though the knew very few people or noone prior to coming to Bama</p>