[StayGolden]

My daughter is currently going through sorority recruitment at Louisiana State at this moment. I think I may be almost as invested in this experience for her and I have been giving updates to my sorority sisters via texts, but I am just so darned excited!
A little background: I went to a smaller division 1 school and was involved in Greek life. To this day, these are still some of my closest friends and so I have always encouraged darling daughter to consider rushing. It probably wasn't until her junior year of high school that she really decided she wanted to rush after seeing so many of her friends and teammates that had gone off to college posting about their sorority experiences.
About my daughter: first off, she is stunning. She is tall, athletic, and smart. She knew she wanted to attend an SEC school as we have about 4 within 3 hours of us. We assumed she would stay in state, as it would be tuition free, but after visiting Auburn, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and LSU, in state didn't make her top 3. She had been accepted but wanted to visit LSU before making her final decision on school and so LSU was a last minute visit in the spring. Once she set foot on campus, she fell in love. By the end of of the weekend, she was certain LSU was her school.

Fast forward to this past summer as she prepared for rush. In her mind, she just wanted the friendships and all the fun she sees on social media. Having gone through the process, especially from the recruiting side, I knew that LSU was going to be competitive as are all the SEC schools. Of course as wonderful as darling daughter is, she didn't fully comprehend that there are probably at least 1000 girls just like her. Of course, I helped her secure multiple letters of recommendations for every chapter (but Mom, it says they're optional) and nagged her to think about her answers for her prompts for her video etc. The girl waited til nearly the last possible minute to send in her application because of the intimidation of doing that darned video! It was giving me anxiety. But finally she was ready to go. For reference, she knows no one actively attending LSU, has no connections to any actives in any of the sororities and obviously is coming from out of state.

Ever since Covid struck, LSU has started doing the initial ice water round virtually. The pnms had the option to include a video with their rush application (I assured daughter this was not optional if she was looking at more selective houses) and on day one the pnms all gathered in their gamma chi groups and watched the videos the houses had made.

There are 12 houses at LSU so it's only appropriate that I use the months of the year. Here are her first impressions of the videos posted by the chapters:

January--apparently a strong house on campus but the video didn't make a strong impression on her--it blended in with so many others

February--she loved this house and I will admit their video made the girls seem down to Earth and they didn't take themselves too seriously even though they all seemed pretty. She did wish that there was a little more talking done by the sisters as it played as more of a hi-lite reel.

March--her legacy house which is one of the stronger houses on campus, but daughter thought their video was pretty rehearsed (which she admitted she would be a good fit for since she thought her own video came off as rehearsed and she had written a script) but the girls were pretty and so she would keep it in her top 9.

April--she liked this house as well based off their video. They came off as winners, and as daughter is extremely competitive, this was a plus. Added bonus, she loved their house colors and the aesthetic of their instagram.

May--strong house academically which she liked, and the girls were pretty, it had a good reputation on campus but she was not a fan of the colors even though I pointed out that they literally are her high school colors.

June--this chapter's video stuck out to her as she liked that they seemed very involved on campus and they had a lot of pretty girls. She also liked their social media presence.

July--another group that she definitely would rank in her top 9 but nothing dramatically stuck out in their video.

August--their video made them seem the most genuine. The sisters talked a lot but it was not as entertaining as some of the other houses. If she had stayed in state, this was one of the chapters she liked, so there was probably some bias in a positive way for this house.

September--her Aunt was a member of this house. She liked that they had apparently a good sisterhood but their video kinda blended in with the others.

October--their video seemed like a compilation of tik toks. It was super entertaining but she didn't like that the girls didn't really talk to the camera--she had heard it was on the lower side reputation wise and wondered if maybe they were all socially awkward and that's why they didn't talk on the video.

November--She had heard this was a bottom house and pretty sure this tainted her opinion of them. She immediately ranked them in her bottom 3. She admitted the video wasn't bad, but after stalking their instagram page, she said they didn't look like the type of girls she would hang out with.

December--like many of the others, their video kinda blurred in with the rest.

She ranked her top 9 all ones and her bottom three were
December
October
November