My daughter just got accepted to the University of Oklahoma and plans on rushing for a sorority. Which ones are the best on campus to rush? I have heard good things of the Pi Beta Phi girls, Chi Omegas and Kappa Alpha Thetas, but more input would be wonderful. Thank you!
Are you the student or the parent? Your other posts are written as if you’re the student.
Which ever one she likes. Asking which sorority your daughter should join is akin to trying to figure out who your adult daughter should be friends with. As long as they aren’t singing racist, exclusionary chants on a bus or doing some other equally horrific thing, you should not have any input.
Also remember that a sorority is just a collection of women who chose to join a rather tight nit organization. As such, any generalizations made about AGD, GD, etc may be partially accurate now, but totally inaccurate by the time your daughter reaches her sophomore year.
We both write questions on this account
I understand and agree, but I want her to get into a good group of girls and she is clueless as to which sororities have nice girls in them, which is why I asked
I think saying you should “not have any input” is a bit strong. Every family is different, although I certainly would agree that the final decision should be the daughter’s. But that is what Rush is for, not only for them to assess her but for her to make discerning judgements and listen to what upperclass students are saying, within reason. Sometimes you just have to jump into the deep end of the pool after testing the water as much as humanly possible.
I sent you a warning that accounts cannot be shared. Too confusing to members as to whom they are answering sometimes. Please be sure to address this.
ALL the sororities have nice girls in them. ALL the sororities have some not-so-nice girls in them. You cannot declare any particular group “skanks” or “partiers” or “fine Christian girls” because every group will have some of each, plus some of a dozen other stereotypes.
She needs to visit the sororities during recruitment, TALK to the girls and see how SHE fits into the group. If you are familiar with any from your time in school, guess what? Things are different now. If she had an older sister who was in school 5 years ago, guess what? Things are different from even 5 years ago. As long as she is comfortable and welcome in her group, you should be pleased. And you’ll be very surprised which groups were her favorites on day 1 of recruitment and day 5 - favorites change every day.
I hope you will be helping her with her recommendations. She’ll need at least 1 - preferably 2 - for each group on campus (even the ones she/you might consider “beneath” her - they could be her favorites). You and she need to find alumnae of each group to write them. Doesn’t have to be Oklahoma grads…could be from any school, as long as they’re in the groups with chapters at Oklahoma. When you find 1 alumna, ask if she knows alumnae of other groups. You may also have an alumnae panhellenic in your city that can help with this, or at least may host a meeting to familiarize the girls with sorority recruitment and how to gather recommendations (recs). Many of them do it in the spring - January through May - so start looking now.
Thank you for your advice! She knows some of her favorite teachers who were in certain sororities on campus. Are they good people to ask? Or is it better to ask younger alumni?
I’m sorry to just now respond to you! People who know you are the BEST people to ask for recommendations! The writer’s age does not matter - in fact, having an older alumna take the time to recommend you to her sorority is very, very impressive! Nothing wrong with young alumnae, of course!
@staceface13
You do realize that your daughter doesn’t get to unilaterally choose her sorority, don’t you? Girls who go into rush thinking that they will only consider sororities XYZ, ACE, and FYI have a long history of being shut out of all the chapters and end up raging about how exclusionary they are when in fact it’s the girls’ own fault.
Go into rush with an open mind and consider all the chapters or don’t rush at all.
“Which ones are the best on campus to rush?”
Girls do not rush specific sororities. Rather, after every round of visits they rank a certain number of chapters and the chapters also make a list of the girls they would like to invite back for the next round. It’s a mutual process. As a result, your daughter may be invited back to a chapter she wasn’t interested in the day before or may be cut from a chapter she really liked earlier in the process. As Joblue mentioned, the key is to keep an open mind and always rank as many chapters as possible at the end of the round. If your daughter maximizes her options and sticks through recruitment to the very end, her chances of receiving a bid are MUCH higher than if she has her heart set on 2 or 3 sororities and refuses to consider accepting a bid from anywhere else.
At such a large school with such big chapters, chances are high your daughter could find girls she got along with in EVERY sorority at Oklahoma. Every chapter has smart, intelligent, wonderful women and you can hear good things about all of them. Recruitment is about finding the chapter your daughter feels happiest at, not the chapter that has the so-called ‘best’ reputation. I would advise both you and your daughter to look past the gossip and find a chapter that really feels like home to her!