<p>Next fall i will be attending either Alabama, Ole Miss, or South Carolina. I am well aware of how rush and everything that goes along with it goes at these schools. But i do have one question that i have never gotten a great answer on. Are recomendation forms really a big deal ? i cant help but think that they are meaningless. if the kid is a complete tool or real weird, having a rec letter (no matter how good) is not going to help. But all my friends at other schools say they heard they are nesessary. </p>
<p>I have a few friends in one fraternity at bama but i dont want that to be my only option. i want to give them all a chance and go into rush with an open mind</p>
<p>I never used recommendation forms when applying to my colleges. If you have official letters of recommendation, then just send them in a nice envelope and you should be fine. I never understood the point of recommendation forms so I didn’t bother to use them. It didn’t seem to hurt anything.</p>
<p>EDIT: My have misunderstood what you are asking.
Letters of Recommendations are…well, recommended. As long as they are from high people like teachers, principles, work bosses, church people, anyone that isn’t your best buddy or neighbor really. They give the admissions office a 2nd opinion on what kind of person you are. If you’ve done a sport, or band, or a good club, then get the coach, teacher sponsor, director to write a letter for you about all the hard work you put into that extracurricular activity. </p>
<p>I think the only time a letter of recommendation should really come into play is if you are a legacy to a particular fraternity. In that case the alumni relative (if it’s your dad, grandfather or older brother) could write a letter to the chapter president. That way they have some background on you and the frat would most likely seek you out during rush.</p>
<p>Letters of recommendation really wouldn’t matter if they didn’t come from a brother of the fraternity. You don’t have to be a legacy to get a letter of recommendation, but just know somebody that was a brother of the fraternity.</p>
<p>You still have to go through the full rush process to get a bid to the particular frat, but the LoR might help you to get noticed.</p>
<p>Never knew there were houses that required recommendation letters… Interesting though. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t be surprised if they wanted someone who was very active in high school with extracurriculars and athletics. When you join a house you tend to be quite active since you will be doing intramurals and philanthropy events. There are some houses that want you to have a good GPA too since it allows their house average to be the same or go up so I wouldn’t be surprised if they mention your high school GPA.</p>
<p>It’s a myth that Frats care about your individual GPA. In the same fraternity of 100+ guys there are going to be 4.0 students that go onto med school, and there are going to be 1.0 students that go onto work at a gas station.</p>
<p>You will have to have a minimum GPA during the semester you pledged to get initiated (at least it was that way at my school). 2.5 maybe? I don’t really remember.</p>
<p>There’s very little correlation between HS GPA and college GPA.</p>
<p>Every frat is a little different, with what they look for in a pledge. Most of all, they are looking for somebody that is very similar to themselves. But even within the homogeneity of each individual frat, there are still a lot of different individuals. Different majors, different financial backgrounds, different racial backgrounds (sometimes), etc.</p>
<p>I have never heard of anything like that. Recommendation letters to get into a fraternity?</p>
<p>I know that SEC greek life is very different (and more exclusive) since I go to UK. However even then UK isn’t as traditional (and by traditional I mean snobby, elite, racist, etc) as other more southern universities</p>
<p>This is not true at all. Maybe during fall rush but during spring most fraternities have standards and won’t let anyone in who made say below a 2.8 or 3.0 in from the previous semester. I agree that once you are in grades become less of an issue but most fraternities will have mandatory study hours or other measures to make sure the GPA is good enough to avoid punishment from the dean</p>