In a recent meeting, the Alumni Inter-Greek Council announced some of the results from their work and research with the task force team on greek recruitment, housing, advising, social aspects, and alcohol. Their research turned up some interesting and positive results.
The retention rate of freshman students from the fall semester to the spring is 97 percent for greeks, whereas it is only 90 percent for non-greeks. This information confirms that fall rush for freshmen is very important, not only for the greek community, but for the school as a whole. The retention rate of students through graduation is also higher for the greek students at 91 percent than non-greeks at 79 percent. This high retention rate occurs despite a 10 percent drop in the undergraduate student population in the spring—due to fall attrition and December graduations.
Members of the greek community have also been keeping their grades stable. The average sorority GPA has closed the gap and is now higher than the all-women and all-campus GPA from last spring. The fraternity GPA is still off by 0.1 from the all-men GPA, but this deviation is remaining stable, which shows that the pattern is steady. A difference of 0.1 is less than a letter grade in one semester and can possibly be attributed to the higher retention rates of greeks.
As for fraternity and sorority numbers, the news is good. The sorority numbers are remaining constant, but the increase in the female population on the campus is lowering the percentages of greek women. The fraternity membership numbers are down, but much of that decrease can be attributed to a fewer students in recent years and the methods used to calculate active members—suspended chapters and FYE are not counted as greek.
For more information about these statistics, you can visit the AIGC page at http://www.alumni.rpi.edu/services/affinity/AIGC/ on the Rensselaer Alumni Association website.
