wow that’s odd, I spoke with UA housing on 2/12 or 2/13 and they didn’t mention to me that it was being extended, they just said her best bet was to find someone with priority to pull her in to a room. Thanks again for the info @Roo17 !
m2msoccer, of the entire undergraduate student body, about 34% belongs to a social Greek organization. Among women undergraduates, about 39-40% are Greek; among men, about 27% are Greek. So altnough Greeks are NOT a majority, their activities do heavily influence campus. I would agree with Roo17 - if she is not planning to rush, find at least one more roommate who is not. Greek members are going to be very busy all semester long, not just during recruitment. It is very lonely to be the only person in a 4-person suite who’s home every night.
Remember that not all the freshman are on Facebook, and not all the ones there are rushing. Whether or not she rushes, I would highly recommend one of the pre-class programs like Camp 1831. It can be a great way to make friends and get involved in something.
@m2msoccer Yes, it is odd however sometime very recently the dates on the website changed to 2/14. Not sure why. Great tip from @Southlander about doing an early Camp if she is not rushing. Many long term friendships have been formed this way!
@m2msoccer Hi to a fellow PA parent! Your dd will love UA and you will find the most amazing parent support group around. The “bamaly” support is far reaching and really shrinks the distance from PA to AL. Go online and search for the UA dean’s/president’s list that was just published and you can find hundreds of PA kids who are doing great. The list is long and we found many families who live close. My dd is really loving all that UA has to offer. It is far from home but she was looking to get away from all the same schools where her HS friends ended up. Pitt is such a good school and only a few hours drive across the state so it would be more convenient. In the end it just wasn’t what she wanted. We have never looked back and now could not imagine her anywhere else.
You asked and my dd did rush and is having a positive experience. She has met amazing women, it has given her social options, and people to show her the ins and outs of UA. She did feel going in that to connect in to such a big campus that this was almost a requirement. I was surprised she wanted to rush since she does not fit the stereotype of the typical sorority girl that was in my mind or in the media. That is ok-2,400+ young women went through recruitment last year and most found their house. She trusted the process and met some really great, strong, smart, involved women. The sororities stress scholarship and service in addition to social. She now feels that she would have been fine without going through sorority recruitement but does not regret it and is getting so much out of her sisterhood. My dd also has many friends who are not greek. She is in a suite and 2 rushed and 2 did not. She met many new people at Camp 1831 and others through classes, the honors college, and study groups. She is also planning on joining a co-ed fraternity for her major. To her, the biggest benefit of going greek was being part of a social group from the start gave her the confidence to try new things and meet other new people. She feels that it has helped her to be more outgoing in class and also to branch out, leave her room, and try other new things. This is why everyone recommends incoming students do one of the Alabama Action weeks and Camp 1831 to meet people and get acclimated to the campus before classes begin.
My dd loves the suites and the ability to have her own bedroom to study and sleep when she needs it. Her suitemates being involved in different things has been a huge positive.They have met each others friends - just enlarging their network.The two who are not greek are close friends with my dd. My dd invites them to activites at the sorority house and has introduced them to many of her sisters. Conversely they have introduced my dd to their independent friends. Having suitemates who are greek/nongreek can be very helpful. Don’t have your dd rule out all girls who are planning on going greek. My dd met them all on the fb and group me pages for incoming students.
To the above poster who mentioned sorority parties in the suites, it has not been my dd’s experience. She is in the honors suites so that may make a difference. The sorority girls who are planning on “pregaming” and hanging out/drinking are doing it at the private apartments off campus of upperclassman or in Tut, not in the suites. Not to say there are not parties and drinking in those suites, there are but just not my dd’s experience with sorority sisters. Going with roommates who are not greek is no protection from wild parties in the room/suite and my dd would tell you it is likely the opposite. Her independent friends are more likely to be drinking/partying in the rooms while the greeks are at house events, swaps and date parties. For my dd it has not been difficult to avoid partying and she can leave those events if she is getting uncomfortable, unlike if it is in her room/suite.
This is long, but I would recommend not trying to rely on suitemates/roommate to be the only source of socialization. Find people that are likely to get along but also set your dd up to have experiences to meet people outside of the roommate (clubs, activities, camp before school begins, etc…).
I thought it would be a good idea to revisit this thread and share a quick comment. My D18 visited UA last Friday and really liked the school. To help her make a final decision I’ve probably called admissions, Honors College, Housing, and Arts and Science dept a half dozen times. What I wanted to share is that the phone always gets answered and any questions that I had always got answered. My impression is that the school is extremely well run.
I guess it’s no surprise that my wife and D18 thought the tour was exceptional, the campus was impeccable, and they had nothing but positive impressions. Applied to Honors on Tuesday and was accepted on Thursday (today).
Roll Tide
@my2caligirls took S19 for a visit on Tuesday. Completely blown away by the personal attention given. For a big university, it is amazingly well run and organized. Has moved to the top of his list.
@mountainmomof3 Similar experience with D19. Over the summer, I wanted her to think of UA. She laughed and made typical “Southern school” comments and the like and didn’t want to consider it (I pointed out that we live in Texas and that’s what other people say about us). I also pointed out that they give a lot of scholarship money, so she should at least think about them.
In October, we visited a college fair. It was here she realized how unique the UA scholarship program was. When I first told her about UA, she just figured she’d be able to get merit aid from anywhere. A few in campus visits and the college fair taught her that most schools have relatively little merit aid compared to UA. So it moved from “ha ha, I’d never go to that state” to the top 4.
Then we visited in November. You’re right about the personal attention. The visit was so much better than any other school we visited (which were pretty generic). And the campus is beautiful and well kept. We visited a lot of colleges, many of which are top 20 colleges. UA has the best campus of all of them. So Bama is not only now at the top of the list, it’s the only one on the list. I’m going to try to convince her to apply to a couple of other schools just to see what they offer, but Bama is firmly #1 right now. She even wants to get rid of her US News rankings book because she thinks she won’t need it any more.
@bamamom2021 Thank you so much for the insight and sharing your dd’s experiences so far! UA did extend the priority housing deadline so my dd now has a housing selection date. She’s still looking on FB page(I’ll have to see if she knows about the group me) for potential roommates, I will share your thoughts & daughter’s experiences regarding roommates with her. Likewise, she doesn’t fit the stereotype so it’s concerned me when she mentioned that she feels she almost “has to” rush. Our local E PA recruiter was great in setting up some last minute one on one meetings & tours for us later this week and one of those is with someone from Greek life, so hopefully after that she’ll have enough info to make an informed decision about rushing. I will have her look into signing up for one of the Alabama Action weeks or Camp 183. Thank you again!
Related though not on point, if you go and research various schools’ class sizes using their online course schedules, you can usually see enrollment caps and even actual enrollments for all classes. While traditional LACs do indeed have small classes across the board, you would be surprised how many super-prestigious universities have very large lecture classes. Do not think that you will never see 40+, 80+, or 100+ classes wth TAs just because you are at a school in the Top 10 or 20. Sure, that 4000-level Chinese Archaeology course may only have 7 students, but for example most Economics courses (including upper level) have 40-50+ or more even at University of Chicago.
@m2msoccer I hope that you are not concerned about my daughter thinking that she almost “had to” rush - that was her impression PRIOR to attending and it had more to do with her far out of state status coming in with no friends from home. The idea that she “had to rush” was not something that came out of UA - in fact the majority of students are independents. There are many ways for kids to get involved and Greek life is just one. My dd had the feeling that if she were going to make the decision to go so far from home it would be in her best interest to have a ready to go built in friend group to help HER with the transition and rushing was the way to go. This also came from her research of UA Greek life and the sheer number of girls who go through the process and find their place. This came from her research that the houses all had 400+ women (larger then the number of girls in her high school) so it was highly likely she would find people like herself but not ONLY like herself. She figured there would not be the drama of a small clique of girls. Had she attended other schools closer to home (Pitt, UMD, U of Delaware, Villanova, etc…) she most likely would not have gone the Greek route - but who knows. Once she got to campus - her feelings changed and she knows that she DID NOT need to rush. She would have been fine without going Greek. Most of her activities and most of her time outside of class is not spent with her sorority. I asked her about this and she has read this thread - she offered up the following information to pass on.
The only caution that she said to pass along is that independents who do not go out of their way to get out meet people can find it hard to find people. At school no one will come looking for you to get involved after the first week or so. It will be up to each person to get out of their room and meet people. She passed along that she has friends from high school at many different universities who are struggling this first year with fitting in and finding their people. She attributes this to them staying in their comfort zone like high school and waiting for friendships to develop. They “thought” they would get out and meet people but have found it is hard to put yourself out there. She thinks many of her home friends would benefit from going Greek to build up that peer group and the confidence that comes from having a group of others going through the same situation. Good luck to your daughter and you as you navigate this exciting time.
@bamamom2021 - thanks for the additional insight, your daughter’s observation makes total sense and is good advice!
@bamamom2021 My son is at Alabama this year. Alabama was probably his third choice out of four schools, but the free tuition for four years swayed us, particularly since the Presidential Scholarship covers grad school if within the free eight semesters. He has been very happy. (Alabama is far more generous with Advanced Placement credit than most schools; as a result my son started with 67 hours. At Ole Miss it would have been 55-60, and I think Tulane only accepts 15 AP hours and 15 Dual Enrollment credits).
I would like to share some thoughts on rushing a sorority if I might. Many people rush and find they don’t like it and simply quit after a few weeks or a semester or two. Some sororities do rush sophomores and I think some have Spring Rush. But the best way for girl to have the maximum number of options is to go through rush as a freshman.
Southern Greek organizations tend to have nice houses which are paid for through high bills to the students. I don’t know if you are your daughter and thinking about the economics of it or not, but if money isn’t a factor then I would say any student who thinks they might want to go Greek should do it as a freshman. Others will disagree, of course.