r/Frat • • Feb 17 '15

Megathread "Should I rush?" - my opinion to your questions.

854 Upvotes

TLDR: YES

actives, if you have any other misc advice you want me to add leave a comment and i'll put it on the list. feedback is welcome too.

It doesn't matter whether you are ex military, socially awkward, 46, poor, or anything other than a rich non-white 18 year old. You should rush.

What do you expect from a fraternity?

I can think of two main reasons to join a fraternity.

  1. You want to make friends, party, brotherhood, connections etc...

  2. Your only goal is to make connections to help you get a job after college.

If your main reason is number 2, you should look into joining a professional fraternity. Beta Alpha Psi is the national accounting fraternity and are highly recruited at my university.

If your main reason is number 1, you should join a social fraternity. lambda chi, pike, fiji, sigma chi, etc...

Rushing a Social Fraternity

Answer these questions:

  1. What interests do I have?
  2. Do I prefer smaller or larger groups?

1- Try to find a fraternity where the members have similar interests to you. Are you a country boy? Find the fraternity that best fits that characteristic. Like video games? There's going to be a fraternity for you. If you're a gym rat, sports star, or an alcoholic, there will be a fraternity for you. You just have to do your homework and find the right one.

2- The size of the fraternity can be a big factor. If you don't do well in situations with a huge amount of people, you should look into the smaller fraternities.

Misc. Advice

  1. You have to be willing to make compromises. There will be a lot of events that you will hate to attend but will anyway. You don't have to compromise your morals. Any fraternity worth a crap will be willing to work with personal beliefs/personal aspects of your life that might be affected during the pledging process.
  2. It is what you make of it. You get out of it what you put in. If you're a dead beat pledge who never puts an effort into anything, expect to have a terrible time. If you go to all your events with a good attitude, pledgeship will be exponentially better.
  3. Don't be a fuck up. I can't explain this one and you will do this at some point. Just try to minimize the damage.

How fraternity life has affected me

My junior year I received an internship for an accounting firm in my hometown. While I was there I worked with a supervisor who was in charge of new hires. During conversation she told me she saw on my resume that I was in a fraternity and immediately put my resume in the call back pile because she was in a sorority herself. I received a full time offer after the internship and will be moving up North after I finish my degree. It didn't matter what fraternity I was in, just the fact that I was in one put me at an advantage in this particular circumstance.


r/Frat • • 3h ago

Rush Advice What should I do - Sec big school

1 Upvotes

Didnt rush fall since I had a busy week when all the events were happening. Want to rush spring but don’t know if I should reach out now asking about it or just wait until the semester is over. Also wanna know if it’s worth writing a short explanation to the rush chairs when asking abt spring since I reached out to them in the fall but I had kinda bailed on them or if it’s simply not that deep whatsoever.


r/Frat • • 5h ago

Rush Advice Purdue University Spring Rush advice

1 Upvotes

I'm a current freshman at Purdue university and I think I might want to rush a frat in the spring. I didn't rush in the fall since I didn't know a lot about the rushing process and I wasn't sure I'd have the time in my schedule but i've decided I want to look into it. Some of my friends are rushing and it seems like a lot of fun (I'm not stupid, i know about hazing and shit but idrc). I'm mostly on the fence because the big rush period is during the fall and I've heard that spring rushers are squids. Most frats here do a spring rush, is it worth it at this point? and how is it different from fall rush? and if i did decide to do it, what are the best tips for someone who's new to greek life?


r/Frat • • 6h ago

Rush Advice has anyone been a part of a business frat and a social frat share tips on how to manage time and do both

1 Upvotes

r/Frat • • 9h ago

Serious philo

2 Upvotes

any pikapps (Pi Kappa Phi) in this community? we’re doing a call-a-thon and would love your support! ❤️


r/Frat • • 1d ago

News Cornell Suspends all Fraternity Social Events for the rest of the academic year

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163 Upvotes

The student body is genuinely furious…I haven’t seen them unite on an issue like this maybe ever. Apparently some chapter presidents are already calling nationals about disaffiliating from the university


r/Frat • • 1d ago

Serious Turning a crappy house into a cool one

2 Upvotes

My frat has lived continuously in the same house for the past 30ish years. We have never been a terribly rich fraternity—we operate on something of a dues-minimizing philosophy, so we’ve never operated with the mindset of incurring projects that cost much money—our house itself is rather small and unremarkable. Still, on top of the house itself not being very impressive, the interior, to me, is just kinda shit. it was never really “designed” so to speak; it’s just kind of a collection of furniture pieces people moved in, wall colors people felt like at the time, and so on. it’s not cohesive and the kinda ragtag appearance, as far as i can tell, contributes to people seeming to feel content to leave junk around/contribute to a growing mess.

I go back and forth on this issue—sometimes i feel like we should rip out all the nonstructural walls and just build a completely fresh floor plan from scratch, and sometimes i feel like we just need to purge the mess as much as possible and try to paint over what we have and unify the space. in any case, it seems like an uphill battle against both the cultural inertia of the space as well as the large cost of most sweeping sorts of changes.

has anyone else here dealt with a similar issue? how can you take a shitty looking house and make it look like something nationals would flaunt on their main website? how do you honor well-loved features of a fundamentally broken space while addressing the broken parts of it and building something cleaner and more purposeful? any tips from people who have successfully handled similar transformations would be greatly appreciated.


r/Frat • • 1d ago

Frat Stuff Pledge Class

7 Upvotes

If a sizeable portion of the pledges cannot make the class time work for them, is there any way offering a second class time would work? I am very against doing this because pledges need to be one unit and do everything together, but if we are going to loose a lot of potential new members if we don’t offer an additional time, should we do it? Our chapter is in a rebuild phase, which is why I am considering offering an additional class


r/Frat • • 2d ago

Serious How do you approach people when tabling

9 Upvotes

I go to a small Midwest school and I’m currently a pledge and I’ve been told to be at the table tomorrow, and I just want to know what kind of stuff do you guys say to have people come check out your table, etc

Especially at my school where Greek life isn’t that big and with all the negative stereotypes how do you guys actually convince people.


r/Frat • • 1d ago

News Exclusive: UNO fraternity member under investigation for rape comment

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1 Upvotes

r/Frat • • 2d ago

Frat Stuff How to advertise darty

1 Upvotes

Throwing a darty in a week and my frat is lowkey kinda bouse but not too small, we got like 35 guys and we're trying to grow, we're gonna have a dj and throw out some drinking games and provide alc but what would be the best way to promote this? Insta post, doorlist


r/Frat • • 2d ago

Frat Stuff Recruitment

8 Upvotes

my chapter is one of the smallest in the IFC at UArizona and lots of the brothers are graduating. for some reason we cant recruit and the people we do are squids. the dean of students has also fucked us over with our housing. we had ifc permission to do rush at our house but DOS said no last minute.

obv every university is different on successful recruitment methods but im wondering if anyone has any tips


r/Frat • • 2d ago

Rush Advice Height requirements to get a bid in touse?

0 Upvotes

I’m a senior in high school right now planning on rushing pike or sae (at Binghamton) but I was curious if height can hinder my chances on getting a bid/decent pledge job because im 5’7 so I was thinking about wearing timbs and stuffing socks/platforms under my feet to squeeze ~3 inches of height. Do I have a chance? (I bench 255 also if that helps).
This is not a joke and I am genuinely unsure


r/Frat • • 3d ago

Frat Stuff What PA's to get for frat basement (Coax worth or not)

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2 Upvotes

r/Frat • • 3d ago

Frat Stuff How can I bond with my pledge brothers?

2 Upvotes

Most of the pledge class brothers don't live in the frat house, what can I/we do to hangout and bond more?


r/Frat • • 3d ago

Rush Advice Does joining frat mean giving up on Straight As?

0 Upvotes

I’m trying to join an academic Latino frat in public state school. So far, the experience hasn’t been fun. The initiation process is basically simulating a corporate environment where we do presentations. We’re given formats to follow and information to memorize. There’s 15 positions to be filled up for our group but only 3 of us actually stayed so we each take like 5 positions. On top of that, the two guys I’m working with both aren’t as reliable. One is a really young dude so I don’t expect him to be as reliable but at least he tries. The other dude is a senior who is not pulling his weight. This dude asked me how to tie his necktie the literal hour before the presentation. They both showed up not knowing how to tie their shit but I googled how so I did it for them. We ended up having to stay and recite the passages until we had it memorized because they didn’t take the time to do so.

Anyways, I now have a lot of shit to do on my plate. On top of studying for midterms I have to interview an active, make a new set of rules, get my 2 brothers to study or even just bother to mention that they haven’t been studying, come up with a proposal for community service, and get ready to be shit on again for the next meeting cuz I know my brothers aren’t gonna be on top of their game.

I care a lot about my academics because I used to be homeless. That’s why I find joining an academic frat so appealing but it doesn’t seem like academics are an actual priority here… If only there was a frat where the initiation process is helping each other get perfect scores in every test lmao


r/Frat • • 4d ago

Frat Stuff Brotherhood is easy.

7 Upvotes

title.


r/Frat • • 4d ago

Serious How to host better events

13 Upvotes

Long story short I go to a small mid west school and my frat is lowkey bouse (using that term loosely since it’s such a small school the whole touse/bouse concept isn’t really a factor.) but nonetheless we hosted our second social the other day and it was fun, a lot of the girls seemed to be having fun but after about an hour and a half most of them had already left. What kind of stuff can me and my pledge class do to improve our socials, all my frat had out was 3 drinking games and music, but as a pledge it was my first social experience so I’m not sure were other frats have at their socials to make it a cool place to be.


r/Frat • • 5d ago

Frat Stuff How to have to most fun and bond with everyone

7 Upvotes

I'm pledging right now, I'm sort of introverted but what's the best way for me to be friends with everyone and put impressions on the frat especially bond w my pledge class?


r/Frat • • 5d ago

Rush Advice I’m pledging rn and it seems like brothers never text me but txt the rest of the pledges.

19 Upvotes

I’m a freshman Pleding right now and we have a class of 20. We are all super close and we have made a good bond. All but 1 guy we all agree annoys us and want him dropped. Besides that me and my pledge brothers hangout all the time and like i said are pretty close. But i notice that a lot of my pledge brothers get funny stupid texts from actual Brothers. Asking them funny questions, asking to hangout, to go get food etc: I never get those texts and i feel like i’ve made a rlly good impression with a lot of the Brothers. We all have a lot in common and i thought they really liked me. I’m having second thoughts on wether they actually like me or not since i don’t get these texts or inv’s. I have never did anything wrong and never given them a reason to dislike me/drop me. Am i cooked? Should i just drop or am i thinking to deep into it?


r/Frat • • 5d ago

Serious Stubborn pledge problems

18 Upvotes

So as the title says, I apparently am disliked by a couple pledges in the new 13-person pledge class, namely the two most vocal ones, one of whom is the PCP. As a senior who busted my balls these past two years building up my fraternity from basically nothing, it hurt me to have heard that they talk shit about me, because I only want them to succeed. I became Vice President a year ago in a time when my fraternity was on the verge of extinction, hoping to help bring it back, and this semester that all paid off with the biggest pledge class in history. My term ends in a month, but since I started as VP, I have started a part-time job in a field related to the career I want to go into, and I am trying to wrap up school and secure a full-time job, so I haven't been as involved as I wanted to since our successful rush ended a few weeks ago. However, I am still responsible for initiating and executing philanthropy, social and other events with the operations board.

It began when I asked if some of the pledges could find a keg for my birthday party and subsequently our tailgate the next day, which would count for my interview. One or two of them are 21 so I did not think this would be an issue, however just for the challenge I made sure to only communicate with one pledge who was under 21 so he would be the one to communicate all the details to the pledge class. I thought it was implied I'd be paying for it but regardless they never got it. Okay, whatever. Apparently that pissed off one of the pledges, let's call him Joe. Joe was pissed even more than he apparently was, (from the beginning he saw me and thought, according to my roommate (the fraternity treasurer), that I wasn't competent because I "look like a freshman or sophomore, not a senior"- at least that was what my roommate was told. For context, I look younger than I am because of genetics. I didn't really think much of it). Point is, Joe, allegedly, went into the pledge chat and started talking shit saying that making the pledges get a keg is unethical and lazy or some bs and I should be ashamed. I apologized to them but they didn't seem to care.

We had a pieing event for charity planned for today, and only half the pledges signed up. Unfortunately, I spent weeks planning it and because of the weather we had to postpone it till after initiation. Regardless, this made me concerned that the pledges didn't take it seriously. I looked into it and one of my close friends who is a pledge shared that the pledge class president and Joe were telling the others to ignore my messages.

Because we couldn't do the pieing event and therefore my pledge task to the majority of the pledges no longer existed, I decided that it would be fun if we all built a beer dye table as a fraternity-wide thing for the new house, directed by the new members. I shared that I would be willing to go help them get materials and other things, and the goal was to create a really neat design that could be good enough to be featured on the dyeislife Instagram account. Sounds like a fun idea, right? Apparently not. Once again, Joe and the pledge class president go into the pledge Snapchat and say some bs like "fuck that guy" or "I'm not doing that shit," "vice president my ass," "fucking incompetent bitch making us build shit for him," etc. I wouldn't have known about this if it wasn't for four of the other pledges telling me. It shocks me to see how entitled these people are, like they wouldn't have survived my pledge process to be honest. Idk what tf caused these two to view me like this because they seemed great when we bidded them, but they won't work long-term if they behave this stubborn in the future. I'm on my way out soon anyways.

I want to talk to the president and the safety chair about this but the PCP lives in-house and he and Joe are best friends with the president. So I don't know how to communicate what I heard kindly. I also don't know if it's the right move sharing that another pledge told me about what they said because it was said in a pledge-only chat, and the president tends to talk behind peoples backs.

This is mainly a vent, but if anyone knows how to deal with this please let me know.


r/Frat • • 5d ago

Serious Do Fraternities at UF bid juniors?

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0 Upvotes

r/Frat • • 5d ago

Frat Stuff Penn State…

0 Upvotes

Might be really niche… too niche… but how is Acacia or Sigma Pi at PSU with letting people in? If I’m a girl and am accepted on Doorlist, if I brought a guy could we both get in?


r/Frat • • 6d ago

Serious Should I drop

7 Upvotes

I'm pledging currently and initiation is coming up. Why I would drop is because to be honest I'm just not close with my PC, I don't really go out with them unless I have to, and to be honest a lot of them just aren't people I really want to hangout with. So it seems like why would I pay the money for something I don't even truly like. What's holding me back is how close I am to initiation, and also Its not like I haven't had my fair share of fun with this fraternity and a lot of the people I do really like and I feel like a lot of them like me as well. I've also pledged all this time and it feels like a waste. Should I drop?


r/Frat • • 7d ago

Serious Considering dropping frat

16 Upvotes

I’m still a freshman but nearly 2 months I’m seriously considering dropping. My main concerns are

  1. Money, I have to pay for my tuition and housing for my freshman year and maybe beyond that, i have the extra $2,000 a year for dues but idk if I want to commit to it. As I can do a lot with that money

2, I don’t think the guys in my pc and actives are people I want to be around fo 4 years, absolutely no diss at them but majority of them a drink everyday stay up until 3am doing whatever and get blacked out way too much. It seems like everyone in my pc is like that except me. I have nothing against drinking as I do it once a week or so but everyday they text about going to some guys dorm and drinking it’s also a lot of other personality things and I get people are different but idk if these are guys I want to be around for 4 years

3, the frat stigma is REALLY BAD on my campus right now, I’ve had 3 girls I met welcome week and hung out with a lot stop talking to me after finding out I’m in a frat, there has been 5+ S/A reports that have come from frats this year and were only a month in. Personally 3+ guys in my pc alone have been S/A’d by girls in sorority’s. This isn’t a problem with my frat at all the guys are good people but you get the point. I have a couple other smaller reasons

Again I have nothing against the guys in my frst they all have shown me love and been great to me. but overall is this something I should drop or should I just wait it out for at least the semester or the first year?