@maya54, thank you, I don’t think my D would like the more superficial groups, anyway. She never sought popularity or status. She’s content with her good group of long-term friends, mostly band kids. In fact, I think she loves band for how they all work together, almost no one sticks out. She’s actuallly quite cute… and can be drop-dead when she gets out of her sweats and glasses (which she can’t be bothered to do very often, though she does like nice clothes). I’d hate for her to join any group based on the ranking of appearances.
Both of my girls are very attractive (if I may say so myself). They have grown up with people being a bit nice to them just for their looks. At the same time, their friendships are deep and sincere. In high school they “chose” not to be in the popular group. They had their core friends, but moved between various groups (the popular group didn’t preclude them if my kids wanted to participate). The sorority they joined had nice girls and that’s why they joined that particular sorority, but I am not going to say the sorority’s ranking didn’t come into play. There were 2 other sororities that ranked higher, but they partied more and didn’t follow the rules as much.
OP - your daughter is focusing on smaller schools and you have shared the reasons. I was shy in college (not any more), so I went to a small LAC with 2500 students. It was in a small town, very far from any major cities. It was good for me the first year because it was small and nurturing, but by the time I was a junior I had outgrown the place. I thought it was more cliquey than my high school. It was great if you fit in, but if you had a falling out with your group it was hard to find new friends. My girls visited my alma mater. They loved the campus, but felt it was too small for them. I also didn’t encourage them to go because I didn’t love my experience. My kids made their uni small for them by meeting people from their majors, clubs, sorority. There were also a lot more options at their large uni when it came to research, course selection (Probability & Stats were offered at 4 different schools on campus), internship, clubs, etc. Just my $.02.
How about NYU? Great liberal art, It’s close enough, diverse enough, Greek life there is pretty mild I think.
My daughter is half white, growing up in a town with 90% white. All her HS friends are white, she doesn’t speak my native language. She doesn’t have any problem “fitting in” per se. But neither did she feel a sense of “belonging”.
She becomes more aware of this in college. She said the Asian kids don’t think of her as Asian and the white kids think she is pretty much Asian. (For some reason Asian folks are very good at recognizing anyone who has a tiny bit of non Asian blood in them. And white folks usually see mixed people as another race and not white. My observation, not necessarily universal truth). She looks more white than Asian and people have mistaken her as Spanish.
At Berkeley she has a white roommate and a Chinese roommate. The Chinese roommate was very cold to her and the other roommate, born in the US but speaks mostly Chinese on the phone. Only after the Chinese girl found out that my daughter has a 100 % Asian Aunt who lives near by that she started to be nicer to her. She said it was so bizarre. The white roommate is still getting the cold treatment. Luckily my kiddo and her white roommate are now best friends. They will move in together next semester to live in an apartment.
OP, to be honest, Greek life was the least of my and my daughter’s concern about fitting in. Your daughter has full control over what club she wants to join. Just bc Greek life existed, it’s a small part of social life. My kiddo knew she didn’t want to do Greek life bc she doesn’t like the group thinking mentality but it never crosses her mind to have Greek life as a criteria to pick or not to pick a school.
Oh, and it’s annoying when someone recommended her to join various Asian clubs because she she looks half Asian. She is born and raise in America and wishes that people don’t box her into a box.
Not sure why it is so bizarre that a non-white person can be racist.
Not if you put it that way. The context is that most of the semester the girl was acting cold. Then one day my kid’s aunt bought a bunch of take-out Thai food for her and the roommates, the girl was shocked to find out my kiddo background and her attitude changed, yet maintain the coldness toward the white girl. And not for lack of trying on my kid and the other roommate. They tried multiple times, if not daily. And it’s not like the Chinese girl was not capable of socializing either. She just chose to not interact with the roommates. Totally bizarre.
@inthegarden For most schools the social chapters Greek life is getting more and more diverse. The main areas of prominent racial segregation in Greek life is the south. I have some friends that are Greek and Lafayette and they really like how inclusive it is. I think the main thing is if your daughter has a personality that fits with a certain chapter then that’s the biggest factor of getting a bid rather than just race.
^ Most social Greek chapters are not diverse. At all. It’s not just in the South. Blacks have their separate Greek societies. There are Asian Greek societies. And multicultural Greek societies are growing. Let’s keep it honest.
@itsgettingreal17 I’m not sure that’s true. Where are you getting that data? Even back in the 1980s, we had black and Asian students in my sorority at Northwestern and our president my junior year was half black/half Japanese!
It depends on the schools. Some of this is true if you look at schools like, Villanova for example (my only data point). My kid’s friends go there and we always laugh (in a funny way, not laughing AT them) when we see the sorority pictures the girls posted. ALL of them were white, and they all LOOK the same and DRESS the same - skinny, blonde hair in skinny jeans/lulu pants and crop/tight tops. I think your daughter would feel uncomfortable in this environment. And so would mine.
But it’s not like that in other schools like NYU, PSU, Rutgers, etc. and CA schools…
@homerdog Of course it’s true. Every statistic out there supports the fact that sororities and fraternities are overwhelmingly white and lacking in diversity. They are also overwhelmingly upper class. A few chapters have some token diversity, but Greek life is overwhelmingly segregated. To say most are diverse is ridiculous. I can’t believe folks here are trying to deny the undeniable. I don’t see this changing any time soon. The current system in place of segregated Greek life where whites join white frats and sororities, blacks join one of the Divine 9, Asians join Asian frats and sororities and those who don’t want to be mere tokens or want more diversity join the newer multicultural society feeds upon itself.
1 Like
@itsgettingreal17 OK. I believe you. I haven’t spent any time looking at all of the data. I’m just saying that we had diversity in my sorority and those women weren’t “token” sisters. And we had a lot of kids who got financial aid too. There were sororities on campus who had mostly “rich kids” but there was diversity in those houses as well.
Chapter photo albums can give you an idea of the situation at each campus.
@inthegarden have you considered Wake Forest? It’s medium sized liberal arts, not much of a political activist campus, Greek life, not as diverse as you would expect for T30 school, which is to say they are looking for more diversity.
^^Yep.
Having a smattering of POC does not make a sorority or fraternity “diverse.” The threshold for “diversity” is so low, that people often confuse a stat as low as 15% non-white = “diverse.” If that number was reversed and the majority of the group was non-white, but 15% were white students, would we still talk about how “diverse” it is? There are many white students that would feel uncomfortable if the stats were reversed and they were in the minority.
I haven’t read the entire thread, so if someone else has mentioned this, forgive me…
My D is white. In elementary school she had a good friend who was adopted from a different Asian nation. Her situation was different than the OP’s D because her white American parents made sure she learned the language of the nation where she was born. (It’s easier in NYC, of course!)
She joined an organization for adoptees from her birth nation and became very involved in it. She still is, as far as I know. One thing they do is mentor younger kids who were also adopted from the same country.
I googled and there are such groups for Chinese-American adoptees. Many limit events to those over 18, but I think it might be helpful for your D to seek some of their members out, if only online. One group runs meetups all over the US–which seemed to be limited to those 18+, but they may have other events. Ask them if any of them went to LACs, whether they joined sororities, and other questions.
They’d been there and done it and I think they might be helpful.
Given what you have posted about your D, let me make a radical suggestion- look at some bigger schools.
I don’t know how big your flagship U is, but there are plenty of U’s that are more diverse than some of the small colleges we are all discussing here, and have the advantage that if you don’t click with the kids on your floor, or the kids you meet in class, or the kids you work with in the cafeteria or library- there are lots more kids to meet!
I would not frame this a sorority/no sorority problem, but a small school/medium school choice. Your D may be a homebody now, but try to envision what she’ll be by the time she’s a college senior- and maybe a small college which seems supportive and loving right now will become cloistered and suffocating once she’s spread her wings a bit.
Yes, someone can fail to find their peeps at a larger college- but most of the time, it’s for lack of trying, not that those peeps aren’t there. I think the sororities sometimes bring out the best in young women, and sometimes bring out the worst. Varies by college, region of the country, and even by year.
One of my kids was in a frat. I hated many things about it but I will say- it was a diverse environment in every way that you could cut it except no women. ROTC kids, kids who grew up protesting the military. Every racial flavor imaginable, with kids who were first gen immigrants and very tied to their heritage language and culture, and kids like yours who were not. Affluent and not. So whatever objections I had about the frat (drinking mostly) for the men in it (my son included) it was a pretty cool mix of people that you don’t always get at college. And a guy with a pretty serious disability and the “brothers” took care of him in a matter of fact way.
The young women I know now who had positive experiences in sororities all ended up with “sisters” who seem just like their friends from HS. From the pictures they post- they buy the same brand names, do their hair the same way, date the same guys, and vacation in the same places.
I think your concerns are valid!
My girls had very positive experiences in their sorority, but I wouldn’t say theirs sisters are just like their friends from HS, or very similar at all.
My girls wouldn’t wear most of the clothes their sisters wore.
Thanks, everyone for the new suggestions. It has been awhile since this thread was active.
The thing is, she is not so much wanting to be in a sorority, as she’s not wanting to feel left out if she does go to a school in which Greek life dominates campus, and, unfortunately, it seems that Greek life just happens to be pretty big at a lot of the schools that are within a reasonable drive from us that she happens to like for other reasons.
Some people have suggested that she just figure it out when she gets to college (as in, a polite “butt out, mom”) but the reason to think about it now is that it could be a determining factor in college selection. In the end, she might be happier in a school that is a little more inclusive, with less Greek life even if it has a less-pretty campus, a less impressive dining room or is slightly lower in the academic rankings. These are things to weigh, so I thought it would be relevant to find out whether some of my preconceptions about Greek life tend to be based on reality (or not) these days.
@Blossom, I hear you about the larger school and I agree to some extent. I transferred from a tiny school to a medium-sized one (but my LAC only had 900 students whereas she will apply to those around 2500). She will probably shoot off an application to the flagship to have that option open. It’s just that our flagship is REALLY enormous and she truly doesn’t, want that, and there really aren’t medium-sized schools in our area that I can find to fit the bill. They are either the local directional, or too gritty-urban schools, or a Looong car ride or flight away ( we are 2 hours from any airport, plus the travel at the other end of a flight) and she’s going to want to come home for short breaks and have us visit for special events. She is really is attracted to the small, discussion-based classes and cross-pollination of ideas prevalent at LACs, especially as she has no idea of her major yet. She doesn’t care a whit about the rah rah aspects of a big school, either. If she ends up transferring to a larger place once she figures out a major and feels more confident that’s OK with me. The one medium-sized school that she’s drawn to is William & Mary. It would be a pretty long drive but I’’d be willing. But we’re OOS for it so I think it’s an unreasonable reach for her.
@jonri, I also dreamed of my D growing up conversant In Mandarin. But making sure of it, like your friend did, is pretty hard to achieve when you live in a small town far from urban centers. And an uphill battle to enforce when you have a young child who has no particular interest in Chinese culture or in learning Chinese, not to mention doing it via online tutoring. Who would she talk WITH? Even if I took lessons to There is no way I could replicate Chinese culture in our home. I think forcing her in this arduous task in our particular environment would have been a sure recipe for my kid to HATE Chinese culture (as opposed to being merely indifferent to it).
We were a part of a regional adoptive families group but in a rural area such as ours it met only two or three times per year as people had to travel to meet. Also, children had originated from many different cultures …not a critical mass of people for country-specific groups. A good thing to help children normalize the idea of adoption but not enough to be a major part of their lives or cultural identity. It fizzled out as kids got older. We took her to the Chinatowns of NYC and DC on visits and attended parades and New Year’s festivals but that a only goes so far. And honestly, that kind of thing felt contrived to her past a certain point. She felt like…yes, I was adopted into my family and I look different from almost everybody else…now can’t we get past that ? Since I’m your kid, exactly what does that dragon dance have to do with me? And why do people assume I should become friends with the one other kid with Asian facial features in the school, whether we have anything else in common or not?
The best thing of Chinese culture we had going was a weekly playgroup with a few Chinese immigrant families when she was a toddler/preschooler. These families were in the area for work (no real immigrant community to speak of) but many moved away by the time my D went to school. It was fantastic while it lasted…Mandarin spoken, Chinese food cooked and eaten, etc. When my D was six we spent a month in China with one of the families that moved back (their D and mine had been best friends and I had hoped they’d stay in our town. D might have picked up some Chinese and cultural nuances if they had). Sadly, I think it was during this trip to China that my D became uncomfortable with the idea of identifying as Chinese. She didn’t especially like the hustle and bustle of China itself (I loved it). She didn’t, like going with her friend to pre-school and the more authoritarian way children were treated. The teachers spoke especially loudly to her in Mandarin (as if that would make her understand it) and that scared her. Mostly, she was given so much overwhelming attention on the streets, in busses, etc (people saw immediately that she was mine and became excited) that she became aware of not “really” being Chinese. She got doting, positive attention but she hated being the center of attention in that way. Still does.
She just wants to have the same free choices and to be seen for herself and not her race just as every white person does (but takes for granted) or maybe every culturally Asian person does within their own community. She feels, for example, that none of her school peers are steered by others toward learning German if they happen to have German ancestry, or Swedish because they have pale blonde hair, or Swahili or Hausa if they are AA. It just isn’t a factor because they are assumed to be American and choose whatever foreign language that appeals to them or is available, or seems easiest. Except for her appearance, she feels mainstream American too ( I joke that she’d like to live in an LLBean catalogue and she kind of agrees). She’s happy enough with her Asian facial features but she doesn’t feel culturally Chinese. I don’t think it’s that she’s rejecting it …it’s that it isn’t her culture! And if she does rush for a sorority (whether a majority-white or a majority Asian one) she would hate for her face or her adoptive status to be some kind of a roadblock OR a token asset. It’s really pretty simple. But not a given to me that that simple thing is so easy to achieve.
@jonri, I like your suggestion that she look up Chinese adoptive groups online to consult about colleges. It could be a great resource for her. I just think she wouldn’t do it. Our very large adoption agency has summer culture camps for children and teens. No way, she refused to participate. For a few years I kept up a subscription for a cute magazine for tween Chinese-American adoptees whose motto was “standing out, fitting in”. She might have secretly liked it, but didn’t, seem enthused. Really, I think she is uncomfortable feeling as if she needs these things at all. Maybe that will change some day, maybe not.
@ucbalumnus, how would a person access those chapter photo albums? Are they posted online?