Sorority Recruitment

Sorority recruitment is a long, daunting process. It occurs over the course of two weekends, and those weekends are very, very long. The first two days make up the open house rounds of recruitment. They are called, very creatively, Open House Round 1 and Open House Round 2. During this round, the girls participating in recruitment visit all thirteen chapters in the Oak Lane community located on Virginia Tech’s campus. The focus of this round is to learn about life as a Greek woman. During this round, the girls introduce themselves and learn about what all the chapters do together, while avoiding the topic of fraternities and alcohol—this is not the time to do learn about the party life of the chapter. This facet of Greek life may be the focus of many girls going through recruitment, however, to get the most out of being in a sorority, other things are much more important. These things include the involvement of the women at VT, their sisterhood, their community service work, and their philanthropy. At the end of open house round (the end of the second day), the girls rank the chapters according to how they liked them, and how comfortable they were.

Most important of the rankings of this round are the last three, as during the next round of recruitment the girls will only visit a maximum of ten chapters. This round is called Philanthropy round. As seen in the title, the focus of this round is to learn about the charities each chapter benefits with their big philanthropy events. In this round, it is important to see what you feel most passionate about. If you were part of the chapter, would you feel very strongly about participating in the philanthropy and therefore, helping the charity it benefits. After this round, the girls rank the chapters they visited. Each girl could have visited a maximum of ten chapters, however, it is not unlikely that some girls will not be invited back to ten, and will only rank those she attended.

The next round is called Sisterhood Round. Each girl attends up to six chapters and learns about the chapter’s sisterhood—how close the sisters are, how much they do together, and so on. This is the point when the girls should really evaluate if they feel that they would fit into each sorority. Even if you’ve heard of a sorority’s reputation, the only opinion that matters is her own. It’s her college experience, and other girls should not influence it. It is a very personal decision and should be reflected upon. After this round, the girls will rank the chapters they attended based upon their preference.

The last round of recruitment is called Preference Round. In this round, each girl visits a maximum of three parties. Each sorority will do something different, and it is very hard to generalize about what will occur on this round. However, it will likely have something to do with why the sisters chose the sorority they are in, and how they have grown since then, whether it is academically, personally, spiritually, or all three. They will receive a bid from one of these three chapters.