Rushing at Miami: Part II

The whole purpose of such a long and rigorous rushing process is to ENSURE you will end up in the sorority that best fits your personality. You are not only choosing which sororities YOU like, but the sororities are choosing which girls they see fitting into the pack.

The girls who were rushing came back to school on the Tuesday before school started. It was a freezing, snow covered day... the dorms opened at one o'clock and the girls hauled our nineteen suitcases up the steps and back into our dorm rooms.

I was kicking myself for bringing my entire wardrobe home... I had spent most of my break soaking up the rays on the beach of Cancun (sorry... I had to rub it in a little) and couped up in my house recuperating from my lack of sleep over the first semester of college. Needless to say, I hadn't worn half the outfits that I packed, so as I sweated up the steps pulling my 100 pound suitcase I was definitely upset with myself.

On Tuesday evening our GLG called a mandatory meeting. We all gathered in the lobby, anxious to find out what this week brought us. Meg (our GLG) handed out t-shirts that were to be worn during the Open House round of rush.

She told us to go get ready for the next day, and that our schedules would be e-mailed to us around midnight... I basically freaked out. I am the kind of person that needs a solid nine hours of sleep to function properly. If I didn't find out my schedule until MIDNIGHT and then I had to wake up at 6:30 to get ready for my first "party"... that's only 6 1/2 hours... I would not be a happy camper.

Open House was split into two days. You were assigned a "travelling GLG" and you, your travelling GLG, and your travel group went to all 18 sororities. We spent 15 minutes at each sorority, learned a little about them, and chatted with some of the sisters.

My GLG travel group was assigned 15 parties in one day... we basically went to parties non stop from 8 am to 10 pm.. talk about a long day. My face was frozen in a smile, and it hurt to walk... my flats had rubbed the back of my feet and left big blisters. (TIP #1: wear comfortable shoes for the first couple days)

When you have down time you pretty much lay down and die on your bed. Make sure that you bring lots of movies and snack food for when you are not at parties because all you are going to want to do is eat, relax and sleep! CAUTION: DO NOT HANG OUT WITH YOUR FRIENDS WHEN YOU HAVE DOWNTIME... you are so tired all you should do is sleep!!!

The evening of Thursday we gathered in the lobby with our GLG and we narrowed the 18 sororities down to 12. We also ranked our bottom 6 sororities (the 6 that didn't make the cut) just in case we didn't get asked back to the 12 that we liked. We went to bed, and the next morning at 10 our GLG showed up in the lobby and gave us our schedule for Round 1.

Round 1 took place Friday and Saturday. In this round we were told to wear a cute shirt with jeans and flats. I was happy to begin Round 1 because I could put my own personality into the clothes that I chose to wear.

I was very excited when I got my list on Friday morning... I got my top 12 sororities that I had hoped to get. I had to race upstairs and change because my first party was at 11.

The rounds progressively get more fun because you cut the "small talk" and really start to get to know the different personalities of the sororities. Also, you would learn more about the history of the sorority and got to help create a craft for the different philanthropies.

Sunday was round 2. We received our narrowed down 7 sororities that we were going to visit. The night before we ranked our bottom five just in case we didn't get one of our top 7. This round was business casual attire, and was forty five minutes long.

Many sororities did a skit and a video about what life is like as their sister, and their was more time to talk. By Sunday my face was numb from smiling so much, and my eyes were watery from being so tired, but I tried my best to remain interesting and fun to the sororities... I really wanted to make a good first impression.

What killed most of us was the fact that after Sunday we had to wait until the following Saturday for our final round... PREF ROUND. We didn't even find out if we got our top three picks until Wednesday. School dragged on for those 72 hours, and when we finally got our top three we had to wait ANOTHER three days until we could go back to those sororities for a visit...

Pref Round is unlike anything that I had experienced so far. I wore a nice cocktail dress and high heels to the sorority suites. Each sorority had decorated their suite so that it was almost unrecognizable, and we spent an hour in each suite partaking in different rituals and talking to more of the sisters.

After we went to our three parties we were finished. We returned to our dorms and waited anxiously for Sunday..... Bid Day.

Greek Life: Part I

Greek life is a very hard topic to talk about in one blog post because there is so much information to share, so I decided to break down the topic into part I - about Greek life, part II - rushing at Miami, and part III - being a pledge.

Ever since I started high school I always wanted to go Greek. I went to an all-girl's high school and loved the closeness and "sisterhood" that had developed between my class and girls in other grades. I wanted to continue to form close bonds with my new friends, I wanted to be able to participate in fun Greek events, and I wanted to continue in the philanthropy work that I had done in high school.

I was looking for a college with a big Greek system... but I was also nervous that I wasn't going to get into one, so I wanted the campus to also have lots of non-Greek students... and that is another reason why Miami appealed to me so much!

Miami's campus is composed of over 50 Greek chapters... these sororities and fraternities focus on learning, leadership, philanthropy, community, scholarship, and brotherhood/sisterhood. To learn more about the Greek system visit: http://www.units.muohio.edu/saf/GRA/

The nice thing about Miami Greek recruitment is that rush is not the first week of school... so many of my friends had to deal with not only entering a new and strange environment, but they also had to deal with the pressures of rush. The first formal introduction to Greek life at Miami is through the Greek Mega-Fair which took place in October.

After the long trek down to Millett Hall we were able to visit all the sororities (and fraternities). They set up booths around the outside of the basketball arena and we could chat with girls (boys) from the sororities (fraternities). It was nice to be able to talk to girls who had gone through the recruitment process the year before. I found myself asking thousands of questions about the different rounds, and I got more and more confused as they attempted to explain the hectic week of girls rush.

Throughout the fall we attended things called "sprite dates." These were informal parties that took place in the sororities suites. They had cute themes like "Desserts with DG" or "Fondue with Fuzzie" and it gave us the opportunity to check out their suite, get to know the personality of the sorority, and meet girls in the sorority that we could talk to.

The boys did a similar sort of informal introduction... these events were called "coke dates." Many of them took place at the fraternity house, but some of them were at other places and required an invitation.
One thing that both boys and girls had in common was a Greek Life Guide. A GLG was assigned to each corridor in each dorm. He/She was our guide to the Greek world. We had meetings once a week where they would go through the ENTIRE recruitment process and answer all of the thousands of questions that we threw at her. The nice thing about the GLG was that we didn't know which sorority she was in... this allowed us to ask questions without worrying about her feelings. She did a great job at answering questions without giving us biased answers like "MY SORORITY IS THE BEST!!!!"

The boys attended open house before they left for Christmas break. Open house was on Saturday and Sunday of one weekend, and the GLG led the boys to each house to visit for 15 minutes. When the boys returned from Christmas vacation they spent Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights revisiting the houses that they liked.
Us girls on the other hand... [insert chuckle here] we had QUITE a different experience...