<p>Are you serious? $2K is insanely cheap. My frat has dues of a little over $5K. I guess that’s the price you pay to live in a mansion with your best buds.</p>
<p>I hope everyone realizes this thread was from last year…</p>
<p>Cabhx- does that include dues, housing, and food? Per semester or per year? If this is replacing the cost of room & board at school then it’s no more than living in many dorms.</p>
<p>Friends for free? Don’t think that’s possible.</p>
<p>Issue here is that there are several things that cost small amounts of money left and right that by themselves seem irrelevant, but once you gather them together, it looks expensive.</p>
<p>For example, with every friend I had that was more than just an acquaintence, I’ve done something like grabbed lunch/coffee or watched a movie. Or, even stuff as simple as studying together while getting a pizza. What about transportation costs to meet them? Wear and tear on the sofa in your apartment? That money you spent on the Xbox 360 so you can play with friends?</p>
<p>Now, lets move on to closer friends. They’re basically the people which you’d go to each others weddings, comfortably ask each other for rides, etc. You usually have to have some strong bonding experience for that to happen. Those, almost certainly, cost money. For example, it may be playing on the same intramural team (facility fees), travelling together ($$$), getting in trouble together.</p>
<p>In my fraternity, I can honestly say that I’ve made 30 friends, and at least 10 of them are really close due to various fraternity activities (eg. travelling together to a national event, returning, and getting robbed at gunpoint on our way back). I also have several friends outside my fraternity, but I can easily say that I spent three times as much in the process of forming those friendships than those in my fraternity, all because of economy of scale: instead of bonding with a new pledge class all at once, I had to bond with them individually or as small groups. The fraternity dues pay for the costs of opportunities that allow you to befriend new people.</p>
<p>As for those of you who have an easy time making friends, all I have to say is: you’ll have an even easier time making friends if you joined a fraternity that’s right for you. You don’t need the fraternity, but it’s an enhancement, so why not?</p>
<p>My dues ( a cook, place to live, money for social events, and other small stuff) is cheaper than living in dorms.</p>
<p>Jesus, $2,100? Where do you go?</p>
<p>My dues are about $700 a year. I pay them, I work 2 jobs in the summer and 20 hrs/week at school, which takes care of it. I would suggest talking to them about a sliding scale, I have a hard time thinking everyone would pay that much.</p>
<p>^ where do you go to school? There’s no way it’s that cheap.</p>
<p>Cab - excellent! I would offer that your statement that the cost is simply the price of living in a mansion with my best buds is a little misguided and one of the reasons some people get the wrong impression of fraternities (or all frats). You should be thinking, or responding ‘hey, it does sound like a lot, but I’m actually really lucky. It’s less than living in the dorms.’.</p>
<p>My dues are $650/semester, but we don’t have a house or a meal plan.</p>
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<p>If the area betwixt your ears is cavernous.</p>
<p>You’re expected to have money lol.</p>
<p>Very funny. I have money, but what I do not do is squander it.</p>
<p>Most people in my fraternity, including me, pay our dues via financial aid money.</p>
<p>Ask them out a payment plan. I know a couple guys at my house who work off their dues doing misalaneous jobs around the house or on campus.</p>
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<p>Any you go to Penn State? lol</p>
<p>^ whats your point?</p>
<p>^You completely butchered miscellaneous.</p>
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<p>Joinh and fraternity and you can write like the guy above. haha</p>
<p>^ You can’t even spell join or a right. If you had an iPhone you would understand.</p>
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<p>lol I did it on purpose.</p>