Fraternities/sororities Forum

[MONSTERSQUAD]

Every time I read about someone's "Greek affiliation" it sounds like a newspaper escort advert trying to euphemistically let the reader know she's down for anal.

[redbull12]

all the people at my school that were in fraternities were the smartest kids in their classes.

[Moneytrees]

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[mist4bison]

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[midwest17]

all the people at my school that were in fraternities were the smartest kids in their classes.

I have no hard data on this, but people liked to say that Greek kids at UCSD had a higher GPA than the average student. It's not that hard to believe that, since anyone with any gumption whatsoever at UCSD was in Greek life.

Pretty much all Greek Communities have higher average GPAs than the average student GPA. Members have certain GPA requirements they have to meet in order to remain a member in good standing. For my sorority, the average GPA for the chapter was always set above the average GPA for the school at which the chapter was located.

It's not that Greeks are smarter, they just have to be better than average ha

Quoting from a few pages back:

Controlling for SAT scores, college major, gender, and state of residence, university students were more likely to have joined a fraternity or sorority if they had come from in state and had higher verbal SAT scores, but lower math SAT scores, the opposite of what simple uncontrolled averages indicate. Controlling for the same variables, fraternity and sorority members suffered from 1 to 10 percent lower cumulative GPAs than non-Greek students. This negative effect was most pronounced for small fraternities and weakest for sororities.

Does Going Greek Impair Undergraduate Academic Performance? A Case Study, Farley Grubb, The American Journal of Economics and Sociology Vol. 65, No. 5 (Nov., 2006), pp. 1085-1110
http://www.jstor.org/stable/27739611

TL;DR fraternities/sororities tend to recruit people who did better academically in high school (this is probably linked to racial and socioeconomic trends in recruitment) and then lead them to do worse than they would otherwise have done.

[Captainunaccountable]

all the people at my school that were in fraternities were the smartest kids in their classes.

I have no hard data on this, but people liked to say that Greek kids at UCSD had a higher GPA than the average student. It's not that hard to believe that, since anyone with any gumption whatsoever at UCSD was in Greek life.

Pretty much all Greek Communities have higher average GPAs than the average student GPA. Members have certain GPA requirements they have to meet in order to remain a member in good standing. For my sorority, the average GPA for the chapter was always set above the average GPA for the school at which the chapter was located.

It's not that Greeks are smarter, they just have to be better than average ha

Quoting from a few pages back:

Controlling for SAT scores, college major, gender, and state of residence, university students were more likely to have joined a fraternity or sorority if they had come from in state and had higher verbal SAT scores, but lower math SAT scores, the opposite of what simple uncontrolled averages indicate. Controlling for the same variables, fraternity and sorority members suffered from 1 to 10 percent lower cumulative GPAs than non-Greek students. This negative effect was most pronounced for small fraternities and weakest for sororities.

Does Going Greek Impair Undergraduate Academic Performance? A Case Study, Farley Grubb, The American Journal of Economics and Sociology Vol. 65, No. 5 (Nov., 2006), pp. 1085-1110
http://www.jstor.org/stable/27739611

TL;DR fraternities/sororities tend to recruit people who did better academically in high school (this is probably linked to racial and socioeconomic trends in recruitment) and then lead them to do worse than they would otherwise have done.

?

How on earth can you tell how worse or better someone could have or could not have done based on not being a fraternity? That's like saying.. "Joe would have made a great doctor had he chosen to goto medical school instead of law school.."

[daryldixon]

How on earth can you tell how worse or better someone could have or could not have done based on not being a fraternity? That's like saying.. "Joe would have made a great doctor had he chosen to goto medical school instead of law school.."

It can be inferred by the fact that students with similar grades in high school that chose not to participate in Greek life have higher college GPAs than their peers that did participate in Greek life. Read the paper quoted above. The researchers controlled for all the other relevant variables so the inference is very strong.

[Captainunaccountable]

How on earth can you tell how worse or better someone could have or could not have done based on not being a fraternity? That's like saying.. "Joe would have made a great doctor had he chosen to goto medical school instead of law school.."

It can be inferred by the fact that students with similar grades in high school that chose not to participate in Greek life have higher college GPAs than their peers that did participate in Greek life. Read the paper quoted above. The researchers controlled for all the other relevant variables so the inference is very strong.

I understand, but people who join fraternities will generally have different goals/motivations/personalities than do students who don't join fraternities. 'Similar grades' is not a valid criteria by which to compare the two groups.

[cron1834]

Do you not know what it means to control for other predictive variables? You are 100 percent wrong here.

[lawschool22]

How on earth can you tell how worse or better someone could have or could not have done based on not being a fraternity? That's like saying.. "Joe would have made a great doctor had he chosen to goto medical school instead of law school.."

It can be inferred by the fact that students with similar grades in high school that chose not to participate in Greek life have higher college GPAs than their peers that did participate in Greek life. Read the paper quoted above. The researchers controlled for all the other relevant variables so the inference is very strong.

This tends to match my anecdotal experiences.

I don't doubt the validity of the study, I am curious, though. I'm assuming you read the study, but did they control for something along the lines of "time spent in an extra-curricular activity" (or whatever you want to call it)? Maybe it wasn't the Greek life itself, but simply the time spent doing activities related to the fraternity or sorority, that took away from time available to study, etc.

If they did control for that type of thing, then that's pretty interesting, because it would suggest that it is something unique to Greek life that causes under-performance. But if they didn't, it's more likely that it is the reduced time you have to spend on academics.

Full disclosure: I did not participate in Greek life.

[midwest17]

This tends to match my anecdotal experiences.

I don't doubt the validity of the study, I am curious, though. I'm assuming you read the study, but did they control for something along the lines of "time spent in an extra-curricular activity" (or whatever you want to call it)? Maybe it wasn't the Greek life itself, but simply the time spent doing activities related to the fraternity or sorority, that took away from time available to study, etc.

If they did control for that type of thing, then that's pretty interesting, because it would suggest that it is something unique to Greek life that causes under-performance. But if they didn't, it's more likely that it is the reduced time you have to spend on academics.

Full disclosure: I did not participate in Greek life.

I don't think they did. (I can look at the full paper again later to confirm that, if you want). I think the question they're interested in is "participating in Greek vs not participating in Greek," not "participating in Greek vs participating in other extracurriculars". Yours would be another interesting question to look at, though.

I understand, but people who join fraternities will generally have different goals/motivations/personalities than do students who don't join fraternities. 'Similar grades' is not a valid criteria by which to compare the two groups.

One can argue that the set of control variables should be more robust, or that we should try to find some better natural experiment to better determine the causal effects of joining a fraternity. But this study is still more valid than what other people ITT have been doing, which is just looking at average GPA of people in fraternities vs average GPA of people not in fraternities.

[lawschool22]

This tends to match my anecdotal experiences.

I don't doubt the validity of the study, I am curious, though. I'm assuming you read the study, but did they control for something along the lines of "time spent in an extra-curricular activity" (or whatever you want to call it)? Maybe it wasn't the Greek life itself, but simply the time spent doing activities related to the fraternity or sorority, that took away from time available to study, etc.

If they did control for that type of thing, then that's pretty interesting, because it would suggest that it is something unique to Greek life that causes under-performance. But if they didn't, it's more likely that it is the reduced time you have to spend on academics.

Full disclosure: I did not participate in Greek life.

I don't think they did. (I can look at the full paper again later to confirm that, if you want). I think the question they're interested in is "participating in Greek vs not participating in Greek," not "participating in Greek vs participating in other extracurriculars". Yours would be another interesting question to look at, though.

Interesting. So the study suggests that Greek life will reduce your GPA below what it likely would have been without Greek life, but we don't know if that's something inherent to Greek life overall, or something specific to it. You could do so many studies on this. Controlling for alcohol consumption, number of people living in one house, amount of time spent working on an extracurricular endeavor, etc.

[mist4bison]

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[midwest17]

On the flip side, there are studies out there that say it will raise your GPA. I've definitely read one before, but I can't find anything via google now.

Either way, there is no way that the study could effectively control for the multitude of variables. I can think of at least ten that would need to be controlled. One variable, like people above have mentioned, would be extracurricular activities. Most chapters (at my undergrad, at least) required members to participate in one extracurricular in addition to being in a fraternity/sorority. Not to mention all of the philanthropies we were required to go to, chapter events, all-Greek events, etc.

I could also generalize and go into the effect that a Greek's vs. non-Greek's personality has on all of this, but I don't want to be flamed, so I'll stop myself.

The only claims I've seen that say it raises your GPA are based on simple averages, and don't control for any other variables. I'd be interested if there was a more rigorous study so claiming.

[mist4bison]

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[ScottRiqui]

Do you not know what it means to control for other predictive variables? You are 100 percent wrong here.

Statements like this in any discussion about research really make my ears perk up, because it's blithely asserting that the researchers were actually able to a) identify every conceivable difference between the two populations that could contribute to differences in outcome, and b) come up with a way to adequately quantify those differences so that they can be controlled for statistically. That part of research and statistics is as much art as it is science.

[SnazzleFrazzle89]

To the OP:

I don't know if this has been said to you yet, so I'm going to say it: If you legitimately have to ask this question, you are more than likely not ready to take on the rigor of law school.

Graduate, go work for a couple of years, and then apply once you have a fresh perspective on life thanks to getting legitimate work experience under your belt (No, I'm sorry, a part-time job in college doesn't count).

Work a 9-5 job and, trust me, you'll thank yourself when you begin applying.

[cron1834]

Do you not know what it means to control for other predictive variables? You are 100 percent wrong here.

Statements like this in any discussion about research really make my ears perk up, because it's blithely asserting that the researchers were actually able to a) identify every conceivable difference between the two populations that could contribute to differences in outcome, and b) come up with a way to adequately quantify those differences so that they can be controlled for statistically. That part of research and statistics is as much art as it is science.

I spent years in graduate school studying quantitative methods, philosophy of science, and research design. That person clearly didn't understand what was being claimed here.

But, yeah, thanks for the lecture and all

[ScottRiqui]

Do you not know what it means to control for other predictive variables? You are 100 percent wrong here.

Statements like this in any discussion about research really make my ears perk up, because it's blithely asserting that the researchers were actually able to a) identify every conceivable difference between the two populations that could contribute to differences in outcome, and b) come up with a way to adequately quantify those differences so that they can be controlled for statistically. That part of research and statistics is as much art as it is science.

I spent years in graduate school studying quantitative methods, philosophy of science, and research design. That person clearly didn't understand what was being claimed here.

But, yeah, thanks for the lecture and all

Sorry about that - you undeservedly took the brunt of my annoyance with other TLS posters who routinely "worship at the altar of statistics" and wave away the difficulty of linking a potential cause to an effect by saying, in effect, "duh - you just have to control for the other predictive variables, dumbass".

[cron1834]

Yeah, no worries. Like I said, that person clearly doesn't seem to know what it means to control for a variable at all, let alone the limits of such things!

[Captainunaccountable]

Yeah, no worries. Like I said, that person clearly doesn't seem to know what it means to control for a variable at all, let alone the limits of such things!

Yeah, I had no idea what it meant to control for a variable, thank you so much rambozo for explaining that to me. The criteria that I stated were not controls in the study.

As to "the person clearly didn't understand what was being claimed here"

How would you know whether or not I know what is being claimed? The claim is obvious as it's the center of our current discussion. Quit it with the hyperbole and false arrogance.

[beachbum]

Law students.

[Danger Zone]

Yes.

[somuchtho]

Deleted

[lawschool22]

To the OP:

I don't know if this has been said to you yet, so I'm going to say it: If you legitimately have to ask this question, you are more than likely not ready to take on the rigor of law school.

Graduate, go work for a couple of years, and then apply once you have a fresh perspective on life thanks to getting legitimate work experience under your belt (No, I'm sorry, a part-time job in college doesn't count).

Work a 9-5 job and, trust me, you'll thank yourself when you begin applying.

This.

Anyone actually participating in this argument is a fool. The biggest predictors of success as a lawyer are 1. intercollegiate athletics (no diff whether D1, 2, or 3) and 2. military service. This was told to me by the founding partner of a V100

Hoping this is sarcasm