[JLCo]

Follow-up:
Re. rushing at SEC university
Thanks so much to everyone who provided words of advice about rushing at an SEC university. Taking into account your suggestions, as well as discussing the culture, the cost of going Greek at these universities, the requisite letters of recommendation and all the other preparation that go into Greek life at a SEC, my daughter decided to go to a Big Ten university instead. Distance from home as well as an incredibly generous scholarship offer from the Big Ten university also played into her choice.

My daughter did sorority rush this year as a sophomore. Her initial plan was to do dance team and sorority her freshman year and then hopefully add a research position her sophomore year. However, her scholarship package included a paid research position starting when she was a freshman, so she delayed rushing sorority to ensure she could keep up her grades.

I got a lot of grief over using the term "unique" for my daughter in this thread. She is highly gifted and those familiar with social, emotional, and personality traits of highly gifted individuals frequently discuss the unique challenges they face because they are different. People do not always like different and sometimes it can lead to being ostracized, as it seems people took offense to me calling her unique in this thread- even though it is commonly accepted highly gifted people are unique = different. I deliberately posted the wrong class rank in this thread to maintain a degree of anonymity until college apps, scholarship apps, dance team auditions, and sorority rush were completed. I think that when I posted this, she was still having some difficulties maturing and overcoming any of what some see as the more negative traits of being gifted.

She did continue to mature, as high school students do. She made NMF and US Presidential Scholar and had many full-ride and full-tuition+ scholarship offers. She accepted a full-ride scholarship offer from a Big Ten school that included tuition, room & board, study abroad scholarship, stipend for books, paid research position, and an additional small NMF scholarship for misc. expenses. They offer 6-8 of these scholarship packages to an incoming class of approx. 8,000 freshman. So, apparently the universities also felt that my daughter was unique. She completed her freshman year in pre-medical studies with a 4.0 GPA, Captain of dance team that competes at the collegiate level, and paid research job. This year she added sorority to her list of activities.

Of note is that my daughter did not obtain any letters of recommendation prior to rushing at this university as the Panhellenic Council advised it was not necessary. She faced the challenge of rushing as an out-of-state student and one who is rushing as a sophomore. However, I think her academic achievements, extra-curricular activities, physical fitness & looks balanced those negatives. She ended up with the maximum number of chapters on her list the third day of Rush and narrowed that down to her favorite two chapters for Preference Day and received a bid from one of her favorite chapters. BTW- she loves her sorority and really enjoys being busy ALL the time!

For those that expressed exasperation that my descriptions "did not add up":
Dance is the most important thing to my daughter as an extra-curricular. That is why she was not interested in doing all the work required of SEC Greek life involvement. Most recently, we discussed she might have to drop either dance or her sorority if the sorority she joined would not excuse for from meetings when she had dance practice. She told me she would drop the sorority if she had to chose between the two. She also told me that being physically fit was more important to her than sorority. Also something to keep in mind- dance offers some of the same social aspects that a sorority offers, although not to the same extent.

My daughter currently has five older dance friends in sororities at UA, Mississippi and South Carolina. I am sure there will be more, given the large size of her dance studio and all the people she knows in the dance world. If any of her younger dance friends plan to go to school in the south, I will be sure to refer them to this site for the wonderful advice you provide to PNMs. Again, thanks to those of you who showed true concern and well-meaning advice regarding the SEC sorority recruitment process. She realized that that environment was probably not a good fit for her. Thanks to your advice, my daughter made college choices that she is very happy with. ��