Greek Life at Duke

xxEMMABEE
Tue, 25 Jun 2013 02:55:46 +0000

Rush isn’t competitive in the way that a traditional southern Greek system is—you don’t need any letters of rec, and it’s rare for people to get totally dropped from recruitment in the early rounds—but it’s still pretty competitive in the sense that lots of girls don’t necessarily get their first choice. I think somewhere around 20-25% of girls end up dropping out of recruitment early or declining their bid (like this year, 475 girls went through recruitment and 364 were offered bids, according to The Chronicle). Don’t let that scare you, though—some people just decide that Greek life’s not for them, and almost everyone that accepts her bid ends up happy, even if she didn’t originally picture herself in that chapter. The process is stressful, like it is at any school with a vibrant Greek scene, but it’s definitely not something to worry about until second semester. I’m a rising sophomore in a sorority, and rush definitely was not the most fun time, but it was worth it in the end.

In terms of diversity, there unfortunately isn’t too much racial/ethnic/socioeconomic diversity among the sororities, at least in my experience. There are multicultural sororities that serve different groups, but the Panhel sororities are sadly relatively homogenous. I mean, it’s definitely not like every sorority is full of preppy white WASPs or anything—each sorority has girls that are from all over the world, majoring in all sorts of different topics, and involved in really cool and unique extracurriculars—but there really isn’t a whole ton of racial diversity. There’s definitely diversity of opinion and “type” of girl, though.

As for sorority reputations, I really recommend that you wait until you get on campus and form your own opinions based on the girls you meet first semester and your experience in recruitment. There aren’t really drastic differences in chapter strength in terms of the important things—even though all the sororities have very different feels, they all have a really strong sense of sisterhood, they all have great big-little traditions, they all have formals and semi-formals, they all do philanthropy and service (and they all have the same type of housing, so no differences there). It sounds cheesy, but it’s really about the group of girls that you click best with—you’re not going to want to choose your house based on what frats it mixes with or how highly random people rate it on the internet. I know girls who worked really hard to get into ‘top’ houses and ended up being unhappy and deactivating because they had only considered social status and not sisterhood and realized that they didn’t like where they were. On the flip side, I also know some girls who were initially devastated to get into ‘bottom’ houses but ended up falling completely in love with their chapter and their sisters. Basically—every chapter has great girls that really care about each other, and it’s just a matter of finding the one that you fit in with the best. But don’t stress at all about this first semester, just let yourself make friends and enjoy yourself, and then decide whether or not to rush.