sorority rush

I can only speak from my experience. I rushed as a sophomore and only got invited back to 8 after first round. The next round I had 5 chapters. I dropped out because I was hurt and confused. I did end up joining a house later in the spring and I am glad that I did. You have to do what's right for you. I did not go through rush my freshman year, so houses didn't remember me from the year before. If you are currently rushing and thinking of dropping, ask yourself what could you do to make the experience better the second time. Would your GPA be higher? Would you be able to make better conversation? If you can't change anything, then your outcome most likely will be the same.

Best of luck whatever you decide.

Some sophomores do great at rush, especially those who come in with a terrific attitude and already know girls in some houses. There are all kinds of personal reasons why girls didn't rush/take a bid in their freshman year- poor grades, family accident, made return-to-school flights before knowing rush dates, etc- so houses are open to sophomores. That said, sophomores should not come in with an attitude like "I'm only rushing this house" or "I know I will get a bid at X because I know all the girls" but should try to stay open minded. Houses keep records of past votes so they can pull those up to see how the sophomore did last year. Sophomores were more common when there were lower quotas at IU and more girls slipped through the cracks. The nice thing about being a sophomore is that you have a lot more real data on the houses because you will know about where your dorm-mates went and how much they love the house. The are great sophomore PC members in just about every house and since they have one less year in the sorority than others, they tend to really throw themselves into house life and stay super dedicated through senior year.

The majority of the women I know who dropped freshman year and re-recruited sophomore basically had the same choices at the end. Some chose to go Greek, others dropped again. You have to wait a year anyway, so why not try it? If it's not for you, you're not bound to initiate and you can choose to go through formal recruitment again. Btw my house does not look at past years' votes.

For Curious, there is a chance that you will get invited to houses that you were cut by freshman year. Let's say you were last in the door and got double-rushed where there is one sister and two pnms. Then the sister forgot your name and forgot to vote on you, then unfortunately you didn't have a lot of votes and might have gotten cut for that reason early on. Your chances as a sophomore improve with the more girls that you know in the house. So if you hang out with your old door mate who is now in a sorority and she shows you around, great. I agree with 'Posh' above that your basis rush outcome doesn't change much year to year unless you make it change by getting to know people, having substantially better grades, having something to say that really shows you fit to the house, etc. Our backroom looks at last year's votes and that room is comprised mostly of alumni who oversee the process.

Hang in there, Curious. Although I am a big supporter of my sorority and the house, I am also always looking out for all women at IU. Sorority rush used to be A LOT WORSE at IU in terms of lower percentages of women getting through due to the low quotas. If a house had 27 spots, you could pretty much know that 5 of those were going to be filled by 'real' sisters of current sisters so then there were thousands of girls in the potential mix for those last 22 spots. With quotas for all houses at 50, the numbers are better than in the last decade. No woman at IU should let the rush process get you down. Not everyone fits in every house. And truly great girls slip through the cracks every year for tons of reasons (like too many girls with the name Maddie, Sydney, or Abby that they get confused; twins where one cuts the house so the sisters don't know what to do with the other twin; confusion about what someone meant by something they said, etc). There is so much else to IU than Greek Life, as opposed to a school like DePauw where Greek Life is almost everything.

It would be a huge mistake to drop with the expectation that things will go better or even equally next year.

But if you have good credentials, dont worry too much

but depends