<p>Hey Everyone. I’m a dad of a D who was just accepted to UA for next fall. She will be in the HC with the presidential scholarship. My W and I are transplanted Northerners now living in Nashville for the last 20 years. We love our new adopted home. Our kids firmly consider themselves southerners. However, neither my W or I participated in Greek life as undergrads. So, I am a little overwhelmed by all this Greek stuff. We have toured many schools, and at the smaller universities and LAC’s the Greek life seems to be pretty muted. Also, seems like most of those sororities are service oriented.</p>
<p>So my question is…how do we learn about this stuff? How do we know which houses would suit my D? How do we get recommendations? Any help would be appreciated.</p>
<p>No advice, but will be all ears. We are also transplanted and have been living in the south only 8 years. Our dd, also just accepted UA last week, is very interested in rushing. We have no real greek experience either. </p>
<p>Other than a few (and I mean very few) friends of friends we have no real connections. I am not sure there are any alumnae organizations in our area either.</p>
<p>I think you’re wise to be starting early on this, that’s our plan too.</p>
<p>I think getting the required recommendations will be the toughest aspect. My D has great stats, EC’s and has her Dad’s sparkling personality!! Lol. But, we just don’t know many sorority sisters.</p>
<p>I think we may contact our local recruiter to see what she suggests. There are several mom’s on the 'Bama forum who will definetly help us newbies navigate the situation.</p>
<p>You’re in Nashville? Recs will NOT be a problem for ya’ll.
Start asking your friends now if they are in a sorority - co-workers, neighbors, church friends. Ask everybody - even men, because their wives/sisters/mothers/daughters/aunts/in-laws may be in a sorority. You will know more than you think!
Keep a list of names and sororities. Don’t trust your memory! Alabama has 17 NPC sororities and it’s impossible to keep track.
After Christmas, daughter needs to start building her resume and packet. The resume should include parents’ names, colleges and their Greek groups, if any. Activities, honors, hobbies, part-time jobs, church activities, youth groups, - anything she has done from 9th grade up. Also grades, class ranking, ACT/SAT scores are helpful.
To her resume, she will make up packets with a picture or two, and her transcript (after graduation). Have a bunch of these packets ready to hand to anyone who offers to write her a recommendation.
In the meantime, you and she can be reading this board, AND another board, greekchat. Just read for a while. There are dozens of threads that explain how it works and what to do. Sororitygirl101 is a blog by one of our CC members, ahphimommy, that is extremely helpful and directly addresses Alabama’s recruitment ins and outs.
And don’t do a lot of this for her - SHE needs to do it as part of her preparation for college.
Nashville does have an alumnae panhellenic, but I’m not sure if they offered any help to PNMs this year - sometimes these groups fall into disuse.
Best of luck to your daughter and you!</p>
<p>All of what Southlander said is great advice. My best advice is to utilize Facebook. I posted on my wall that my DD was going through recruitment at Alabama, needed recommendations, and please let me know if you can help. I was quite surprised at the number of friends I found this way who were willing to help. Have your daughter do the same - friends’ moms, aunts, teachers, etc. will likely step forward. </p>
<p>Definitely get the rec packet going as soon as you can. And for heaven’s sake, make sure DD’s resume is complete! I wrote several recs for girls myself this year and had to call two of them for information because their resumes were, quite frankly, not well done. Check out SororityGirl101 for help with that. </p>
<p>My daughter just finished rush. We did have the recommended (read required) two recommendations per sorority. </p>
<p>If you are having issues getting the recommendations, you can call the local panhellenic chapter in your city. They helped me finish up the last two sororities that I needed help with.</p>
<p>Please have your daughter go in with a good attitude and an open mind. Rush is superficial. It is also not personal. When certain sororities don’t give invites back, it might not have anything to do with your daughter and how she interacted with the actives rushing her from the sorority. The girl could have loved her but she might be a girl who has a big voice in the sorority. The pledge classes are huge. They were all over 110 this year (or right around there). The actives in the house number over 250, so even if every active has one favorite, then half of the actives don’t get their favorite girl in the pledge class.</p>
<p>Every sorority at Alabama is full of wonderful girls and they are all diverse. Some sororities are more known for scholarship (house GPA’s are posted online). </p>
<p>If your daughter is open to the process and doesn’t have her heart set on a specific sorority going into rush there is a 85% chance that she will pledge a sorority which she will be very happy with. </p>
<p>Also, speaking from experience the house I pledged in college was not my first choice during rush. When I looked back at the experience after graduation, I realized that I ended up exactly where I was meant to be. I truly don’t think that I would have been as happy at the houses that I thought I wanted as a freshman. The process usually works out as it should. </p>
<p>It was a good experience for my daughter. She gained more and more confidence as the week went on. Rush was way outside of her comfort zone. Meeting new people and engaging in small talk etc is difficult for her but she ended up meeting some great girls both in the sororities and in her rush group. She chose a sorority which I think is a great fit for her after meeting both pledges and actives at Bid Day. </p>
<p>Rush is stressful and can be overwhelming. I tried to keep my daughter focused on an open mind and just enjoying the process. She went in with a great attitude and had a really great rush!</p>
<h1>1 thing you can do is read every blog available on Sorority Girl 101. I think someone posted a “way to get there” in a previous post.</h1>
<p>Start asking around now for rec possibilities. It never hurts to start early. Your daughter needs to ASK for the actual rec, not you. She can offer to meet with an alum one on one.
**One less thing you need to worry about during the whirlwind end of senior year.</p>
<p>My daughter just finished rush and is also in the HC. As a fellow “northerner”, I get where you are coming from. You are smart to start looking for information! I would highly recommend that you and your daughter attend the preview parties that will occur sometime in February (check out the uapanhellenic site)</p>
<p>My daughter did not decide on Alabama until late January last year and we were not up to speed quick enough to attend this weekend event. I wish we had. The girls get to visit each sorority house and they have programs for the parents that explain the whole rush process. Luckily I had some experience with the greek system and I had a wonderful friend whose daughter went through rush at Alabama and brought me up to speed on rush in the SEC.</p>
<p>As far as rec’s we did not get the recommended 2 per house. We were happy when we found one person for each chapter! She still had a very successful rush and was always invited back to maximum number of houses during each round. </p>
<p>For contacts I used email, facebook, church, work, just about anyone I ran into to try and find recs. There were still about 3 houses that we couldn’t find contacts for and so I started contacting local alumnae groups in my area (google was my best friend in that arena). Total strangers and they were willing to help!</p>
<p>I’ll reiterate what itsallgreektome states. Make sure your D keeps an open mind. My D attended some pre-rush invite-only parties that were held in March. One of the houses she went to she really was not impressed with. When she came back for rush week, she liked them more and more each round and ended up listing them as one of her top three choices at the end of the week.</p>
<p>And as far as recs, don’t give up even as it gets near the deadline for getting them in. There was one chapter that my daughter and I had inadvertently forgotten about. We didn’t realize this until July and we ended up contacting a local alumna chapter one week before the recs were due. I don’t think the alumni that wrote the rec had time to complete it before the deadline, but it seemed to work out OK because that house also invited my daughter back for the preference round.</p>
<p>I apologize for my uninformed questions. But, it seems strange to get a rec from a total or near total stranger?!?! Imagine getting a teacher rec from a teacher you don’t know? I must be missing something.</p>
<p>Class2017Mom has covered just about everything! Just wanted to add the idea of checking out the websites and FaceBook pages for each House early. Several put out postings asking current members, alumni, and friends to send in names (with contact info and pictures, if possible) prior to the preview weekend and private invite parties. It’s a good way to get your daughter on their radar early. We thought DD was headed to a school on the west coast so we missed all of those opportunities. She still had a great recruitment experience and ended up in her first choice. However, i’ll be sharing this advice with friends who have daughters coming to UA in 2014.</p>
<p>Bigdaddy88- I’m with you on that but that’s just the way it works…tradition is to have someone “introduce” the young lady to the organization. The “strangers” will have her transcript, social resume, photo, and possibly a face-to-face meeting to help them get to know your daughter. Most of the recs we received were “friends of a friend/relative” so they had some sort of connection to our family. Sometimes that’s just not possible with the number of houses at UA.</p>
<p>Please read through the advice carefully. It’s been mentioned more than once about possible one on one meetings, whether via phone or coffee shop, etc between the PNM and alumn.
No one wrote my daughter a rec without having some sort of personal contact with her. She drove downtown in our city to meet someone at her office after the school day, she met another lady at the local coffee shop, she met one at a friend of a friend’s son’s birthday party, etc. The alumni can be “strangers” but remember you got her name from somewhere or somebody. It’s not like it’s a random run-in.
Remember–it’s not just someone who is willing to write a rec but it’s them sticking their neck out for a PNM. Most alumn are aware that they are responsible for that particular PNM when they agree to write a rec. I do know that some recs aren’t exactly glowing.
Alumn will snoop around, ask around, find out what they can before they write a rec. If your daughter’s social media is questionable, get it cleaned up now. If she doesn’t want Pastor so and so or grandma to see some things that she may have on FB or Twitter, etc, then trust me, she doesn’t want an alumn writing her rec to see it either!
Think of it as a job interview when asking an alumn to write a rec. She’ll find much more out about you than you will about her. She still needs to be herself. A rec is to voice the alumn’s opinion about whether the PNM is a good candidate for their organization or if she presents a liability. Liability meaning grade risk, questionable social behavior, unladylike personal conduct, etc.
The PNMs rec packet should contain accurate and honest information; i.e. social resume, academic resume, gpa transcript from the school (not just stated), a brief introduction of who she is written by her, why she wants to join a sorority, senior pics, etc. It should be a well-rounded summary of who she is. It is definitely not something that should be thrown together overnight.</p>
<p>^^ Excellent advice. I would add that it really paid off for DD to look at as many RIF forms for the chapters at UA as possible to see what kinds of questions were being asked. She then developed her social resume to answer all of the questions asked. Not all sororities have their forms available, but many do.</p>
<p>For example, several forms asked about interests, recent challenges, most meaningful EC experiences, travel, etc. DD included a section in her resume to let her recommenders (word?) know enough personal information about her so that all those questions could be answered. </p>
<p>It really helped get conversations going with the alumnae she met with, and also gave the chapters information as conversation starters. She said that her initial conversations at several houses were about things she had included in that section of her social resume. The recruitment committees really do read them!</p>
<p>^^Absolutely! Please also remember that the Alum’s writing the rec letters or even filling them out online are taking a lot of time out of their busy schedules to do this for each PNM. A hand-written thank you note is a very important item to include in each rec packet that is sent out. We were humbled by the number of women who even considered writing a letter of recommendation for my daughter. Can’t thank them enough!</p>
<p>Our good friend’s daughter just rushed this year as a sophomore, and she found letters of recommendation through activities her brother was in. Our boys all participated in the same sport through middle school and high school, and lo and behold, some of the other team moms had been in sororities in college and were happy to write recommendations for her. She got a bid and was off to a fun filled weekend in another city with her newfound friends and is already having the time of her life.</p>
<p>Thanks to everyone for all the great info! Also, thanks for having patience for my ignorance. It is difficult to convey how foreign ( no pun intended ) this whole Greek thing is to us!</p>