studious houses

Even outside of the grade report this is pretty true. Theta and ADPi have a lot of girls who aren't partiers and their slightly lower gpa is mostly due to people being in tougher majors, they tend to attract a lot of smarter stem majors there.

there's a difference between being above the university average and being studious. The University average is below what most people consider getting great grades.

This is a good point. Also, keep in mind that houses that take risks with OOM girls (rather than only taking new members that fit a particular, mostly in-state, teacher's pet type mold... AXO, XO, AGD...) have tons of very focused intelligent and hard working smart members. But those houses have somewhat of a greater ratio of girls who just totally kill the in-house average and probably should not have even come to Alabama for college. It is hard to know who will flake out and crash like that, but the houses that are willing to take some risks in recruitment definately pay for it come grade reports time. Somebody also said that many OOS STEM students that are coming to UA now are trending to the houses on the GPA list that are in the lower half of the averages. This is not surprising. Many of the houses high up on the list have lots of girls in majors that not exactly forcing them to take higher level core classes in first semester of freshman year and also they have the money to take their sweet time in college and take fewer classes per semester. So be careful not to draw too many conclusions about the quality of a sorority, its members, its sisterhood and stuff like that just based on GPA.

On Alpha Phi -- things like artistic talent, charisma, business demeanour etc, aren't assessed in school; even in art classes or drama classes or business classes, because those are the kind of things that can't be judged by examinations and things like that. The way things are taught in most school focuses on just one kind of intelligence, and just one kind of success - and it's not going to suit everyone. People learn to use the talents they have for the most part. They will be just fine. \n\n\n\n\nAnd different people are led by different things, success is different to everyone. Some people want recognition, some people equate success to money, some people are led by passion.