<p>Hey, I'm planning on attending Rhodes College in the fall as a freshman, and I wanted to know if anyone knows anything about rush and sororities in general or specifically at Rhodes or a similar small school that could help me find out if there is anything that I can be doing now to get ready. Any advice would be helpful!</p>
<p>hey-</p>
<p>read the book Pledged. It gives you a realistic perspective of sororities and will help you decide if the greek scene is for you. Also, there's a book called Rush: A girls guide to sorority success. Quite honestly the second book disgusts me, but if you have a hardcore greek system at your school the advice is helpful. It talks about getting recommendations from chapters in your hometown or from alumni, bringing the houses presents before rush, buying appropriate rush attire, etc.
I'm involved in a sorority in California at UC Santa Cruz and didn't read either of these books. However, if you want advice both of these books are a good place to start. Good Luck.</p>
<p>I read Pledged last summer, and though it portrays an accurate view of sororities, the book is really only relevant to large publics, schools that highly value greek life, and the top, most popular and competive sororities. It is however, an excellent summer read.</p>
<p>The Rhodes website probably has a Greek page with some information on rush. Each sorority is different, and you should take the time to get to know them and figure out your best fit. It's probably easier to do this once you're on campus and you can talk to the sisters or others. Work on preparing for freshman year first. Then move into the Greek scene.</p>
<p>if you do a google search "rhodes college guide" you'll find a book about rhodes. Don't know how accurate it is, but you could take a look at it.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that the greek system is quite controversial; people seem to either love it or hate it, so you're going to get quite polarized opinions.</p>
<p>The way rush usually works is that you show up before the school year begins. Rushees are split into groups the first nite and have a student advisor who is in a sorority but is neutral and won't tell you what house. The group goes to all the houses and you have a very quick conversation with a member or two. Then the groups are dissolved (although you still have the advisor) and the houses decide who they want to invite back the next nite. Each nite they are allowed to invite back fewer girls, so that means the rest have to be "cut" from that house. Not only is there a lot of stress on rushees, there's also a lot on the sorority chapters; if they guess wrong about a girl and make her a bid they could end up stuck with someone they don't like. As you can see, there's a lot of snap judgements going on.</p>
<p>My suggestion is -- why rush now? At a small school you're going to make lots of friends so you don't need to jump to join a club to get involved. If you wait until soph year to rush you'll have plenty of time to get to know girls from various houses and decide for yourself at a more relaxed pace which are right for you, rather than having only a few days to make the decision like you will at rush. Not only that, the friends that you've made frosh year who are in houses will be your allies during rush since they'll want you in their house. </p>
<p>And you'll still be able to attend plenty of frat parties and the like, so its not like the doors of the greek world will be entirely closed frosh year.</p>
<p>I have to add as a caveat that this is based on my knowledge of how rush works at a large U. I've never heard of Rhodes and it may be they do things different there, so you probably need to find someone who knows what things are like there in particular.</p>