<p>PROS & CONS OF FRATERNITIES?
Any thoughts.</p>
<p>Pro - if you have a hard time making friends,
but aside from that, I personally would not want to join</p>
<p>It’s probably better off people actually in the school answer this. I’d give some information but I’m a bit occupied at the moment.</p>
<p>If you have a hard time making friends, you probably wouldn’t be able to get into a fraternity.</p>
<p>I have a daughter who is in a sorority. I will offer some pros of Greek life, from a sorority point of view, and many of those pros probably are applicable to fraternities.</p>
<p>The girls are there for each other for many ups and downs of college life.<br>
Their social life is fuller and they have more opportunities in meeting people they otherwise wouldn’t.
They have more opportunities to organize different social events, which could be very useful later on.
My daughter had opportunities in working with school administrators through various volunteer work.
Some employers do view it as a plus to belong to Greek life.
Memebers of Greek life run their own chapter, which involves finance, staff management, which gives members opportunity to have some leadership/work experience.
For the size of Cornell, by belonging to Greek life, it just makes it little bit smaller and more manageable.</p>
<p>My daughter just went through her last rush at Cornell. I remember her rush week freshman year. It was filled with anticipation, fear, and excitment of ending up at a sorority with all of her 3 best friends. Over the years, she has been very involved with recruitment, social planning, and various charity events. Tonight is when they will be getting their new “babies,” she feels she is passing on the torch to the next generation. It is an experience she will always cherish.</p>
<p>Just a bit about getting into a fraternity, all the networking is down during freshman fall semester, rush week is just the finale. It is different with sorority rush, they are not allowed to officially recruit until the rush week, whereas fraternities are allowed to have special events for potential pledges in the fall. If a guy wants to join a fraternity, it is best to start networking in the fall.</p>
<p>Greek life isn’t right for everyone, and you certainly don’t need to join to have a successful college experience. For all the negatives about Greek life, it has been a very positive experience for my daughter.</p>
<p>If you fit well with a group of people that constitutes a given fraternity/ sorority it is a good way to make cornell functionally smaller and gives you a built-in social scene without having to make one for yourself.</p>
<p>But not everyone fits the mold, and if you don’t, you don’t. I didn’t, for example, and neither did D2 who is there now. yet we both had a good time there.</p>
<p>The rush process can be unfortunate, d2s friend was excluded from all sororities, there are only 11. and that is not uncommon.</p>
<p>You have to want to do all the fraternity/sorority stuff, We had a guy living with us senior year who bolted out of one,because he just didnt want to do it anymore, as it turned out. He had gotten a committed girlfriend, I think that was the turning point for him.</p>
<p>They have better housing than the dorms, and they eat together.</p>
<p>I just joined this forum to try to get some solace, for my freshman daughter was rejected by all her top choices and dropped out of rush last Friday morning, before she even got to wear what we went out and bought for this torturous week. She has been in her dorm room for two days crying, for her two best friends are pledging their favorite house together. She didn’t even mind if she had been chosen in another sorority different from her friends, as long as she felt comfortable with girls she could relate to. After reading many accounts on different threads today, I realize just how superficial the whole process is. If you can pass the clothing and manicure test and make it to a round that they can get to know you for more than a few minutes, you can be lucky. I only hope she will branch out and connect with more girls like herself who aren’t entering the exclusive Greek system at Cornell. She was so thrilled with her school choice until this week, but now does not know with whom she will live next year (since her roommate is one of her best friends) nor how she will continue to have a social life, since she had been going to frat parties this past fall, but will not be included in mixers.</p>
<p>Tough thing unamadre, D2s friend as well, and many others.
Hopefully she will pick herself up, brush off, and go and have a great time anyway, as D2 is having. She should go try to scoop up a group of other kids she knows and rent a house in collegetown together, one can have a good time there as well, I guarantee it.
After all most people at Cornell are not in the frat-sorority scene, and many still manage to have a great time there.Make sure to remind her of this. good luck to her.</p>
<p>unamadre - I hope your daughter has the chance to get involved in some of Cornell’s other wonderful activities and groups - there are so many other great choices outside of the Greek system, volunteer and interest groups - even some part-time jobs are social and inviting.</p>
<p>Thanks for the comforting words! As parents, we know that she will move on and find a niche for herself; however, it is hard to convince her of that. She is an engineering student, so she would probably be too busy for many of the required social gatherings. </p>
<p>I had Thai food delivered to her in the dorm tonight, but there isn’t much as I can do to make her feel better. To top things off, she has a horrible cold from waiting in lines in the freezing cold last week. She will live on West Campus next year, and then move on to Collegetown in her junior year. Don’t most sophomores move to West Campus if they don’t go Greek?</p>
<p>thanks for the posts</p>
<p>unamadre, if it makes you feel any better not joining a sorority is most definitely not the end of the world, though it may feel like it to the girl at the moment. i have a ton of friends who aren’t in a sorority, along with a bunch of friends in different sororities, and of course a lot of friends in my own. rush can be a very difficult process, particularly for girls who aren’t great at small talk, aren’t bubbly and talkative in general, or simply shy and unwilling to open up so quickly (you really only have a few days). </p>
<p>but when you really think about it, is there really a better way to do it? the only thing i can think of is if cornell allowed sororities to hold events in the fall for freshman, allowing them to ease into the process of meeting new girls rather than stuffing everything into a week. idk why cornell doesn’t do this but as the rules are now, there’s really no alternative</p>
<p>additionally, if this comforts you at all, rush may be a superficial process in terms of how all you really have to base an opinion on is a bunch of 5-10 minute conversations with 4-5 girls of the entire sorority. decisions are difficult to make because of this and many girls slip through the cracks. if the conversations they have had aren’t interesting and memorable and different from the usual whats your major/where are you from/how was your break, the girls just blend together. but one point i would like to make is that i’m sure not all sororities do this but i’m also sure some do, and mine in particular does not take appearance into account at all. at the end of the day you REALLY cannot remember what a particular girl looked like or wore, considering you’ve talked to probably 50-60 girls that day, and when trying to make decisions it is COMPLETELY banned to make any comments relating to appearance. at all. no pictures are brought up, no facebook stalking is done, none of those rumors are true, at least for my sorority. </p>
<p>also if she has any friends in frats she will be able to still go to parties, and i bring my non-greek friends to my sorority events. she can join clubs and other organizations, many of which also have social events. theres also the option of academic fraternities which also have social events. this campus is so huge and there are so many opportunities, greek life is only one of those. i’m sure your daughter will find her fit.</p>
<p>oh also a couple of more things. i wish she had stuck with it for at least friday because she may have found out she actually liked her other options. its so easy to be confused by all the reputations and rumors everyone talks about but really its about personal fit. from what i’ve seen most of the time when a sorority cuts a girl it usually ends up that the girl would really just not fit into the sorority’s personality type. i know i got cut from my top choice but looking back i’m so so happy i ended up where i am now, instead of somewhere i felt pressured to be perfect. friday is actually the most fun day because you get to see the skits and see what the personality and humor of the sorority is really like.
finally, if your daughter finds at the end of this semester that she still wants to be in a sorority, many of them also participate in fall rush. its far less formal, less structured, and usually involves casually meeting and hanging out with the sisters in the beginning of sophomore year.</p>
<p>unamadre - My D also did not get into her top choices last year but did pledge at another sorority and as you would expect, really likes her sisters, can’t imagine anywhere else, blah, blah, blah… However, she is still friends with all her other non-Greek friends, makes time to hang with them, etc. One will be living with her and some girls from a variety of sororities next year in Collegetown. Most of the non-greeks live in West right now. Some non-greeks even live in soroity annexes right now.
Your D can always pledge next year. I know my D and some of her sisters did some sort of writing campaign to get one of their friends in the sorority. maybe your D would be interested in that.
So although it feels like crap right now, it really isn’t the end of the world. From what D says, alamode is spot on.
PS I guarantee you, D would have never passed a clothing or manicure test.</p>
<p>Thanks so much alamode and woody!! I tried to hard to convince her to continue on Friday, but she was shocked that she was turned down from her top three choices. I told her that she made the same quick judgment that they had made, so she wasn’t much better. It is easy for me to tell her that, for I wasn’t going through all of it. </p>
<p>I tried to find out information about the co-ed academic frats, but only saw information on a few, and none seemed to pertain to engineering students. Am I correct?? Also, is it very difficult to get good choices for West Campus with the lottery system, or are there lots of good options?? (By the way, she is involved in a club, but some of the girls are in a sorority that turned her down, so she feels hurt by that too!) Thanks again.</p>
<p>I’d like to comment on the co-ed frats, many of which are professional fraternities. i see that Cornell has Alpha Chi Sigma which is a chemistry co-ed fraternity. There are also a lot of chemical engineers and other science focused students in it. </p>
<p>They have a house on North campus. I don’t know this chapter, but can speak of the benefits of such a fraternity as I was a member in college.</p>
<p>I was in a chapter at my school on the west coast. I had a blast with my brothers and sisters. We all had similar academic interests but also had a lot of fun together. Professional fraternities offer many of the same types of traditions as other greek organizations–initiation rituals, big brothers, little sisters, networking across the nation via alumnae and collegiate chapters, national meetings, faculty advisor, etc.</p>
<p>I met my husband of 23 years at our national meeting in North Carolina. He was the member from another chapter in CA where he was doing graduate work. We joke to this day that the “chemistry” was right. I met a lot of great people at that national meeting.</p>
<p>These are social people who like to have fun, go to parties, etc. I loved being in a professional fraternity. I liked having guys in my fraternity. And the networking after college was great. The house for my husband’s chapter was a lot of fun and sometimes our chapters mixed. We also did some mixers with other greek organizations and of course had friends outside of the fraternity.</p>
<p>unamadre, it is understandable because at the moment it seems shocking and the end of the world, it’s a pity though because most girls who stick with it end up finding out they love it. idk about engineering, i’m a fashion design major and that’s not really my territory, i do know lots of people in business frats though and apparently those are a lot of fun, and i know there are some general honors ones. also its usually difficult to get an awesome time for the west campus lottery but i think that’ll change drastically this year because they’re giving freshman/incoming sophomores first priority instead of the usual way when they give seniors first priority. also you can block with like 4 people and use the best time of those people.</p>