The Best College In Each State For Fraternities And Sororities

There are about as many opinions of Greek (fraternities and sororities) organizations’ merits as there are letters in the Greek alphabet — there are in fact 24 opinions — and even more opinions on which school has the best Greek life.

Proponents of fraternities and sororities laud the intangible skills people learn from the organizations like “mindsight”, leadership, and networking — but we also found that a heightened Greek presence on campus raises its members GPAs.

Skeptics think it’s all just a bowtied elitist ploy to get wasted in expensive houses and exclude the have-nots.

Each side can make valid points, but no matter where you fall on the Greek approval spectrum, a Gallup survey showed that there are definitive, tangible benefits to participating in Greek life.

Which got us wondering: which schools have the best Greek life? Well, we did our Zippia thing and ranked them all — we’ll tell you how we did it, but first the top ten.

Alabama
Cornell
UIUC
UGA
Mizzou
University of Michigan
USC
University of Florida
University of Oklahoma
University of Kentucky

How we determined the best Greek life school in each state

There are other entities out there that have attempted rankings like this before, but they fall short in one of two ways: they are either data-less, subjective and bro’d out — or they focus too much on government data and lose some of the intangible social value that comes with Greek membership at certain schools.

Our criteria sought to not only place value on the potential academic and career benefits, but on the prestige that comes with membership. Basically, we didn’t want any schools on our list that didn’t contribute to both a successful academic school week and a fun weekend.

Specifically, our criteria are:

The total number of chapters at the school (Larger presence is better)
Count of Greek Rank reviews and discussions
Greek organizations’ GPAs
Involvement in Greek life at each school

We ranked the schools within each state by those criteria, and then we ranked the best-in-state against one another.

As an example, Auburn has a fantastic school for Greeks and the entire state of Hawaii doesn’t — but Auburn didn’t make this list because Alabama blew all of the competition out of the water in Alabama.

Greek membership: raising GPAs up and throwing down

You may notice from scanning the list of the 50 best below that there are a number of prestigious universities amongst the bunch, which contributes to these facts about post-graduate success for members of Greek organizations :

Since 1825, all but two presidents have been Greek.
As Alumni, Greeks give approximately 75 percent of all money donated to universities.
85 percent of the Fortune 500 executives belong to a fraternity and 76 percent of Congress.

New York Times columnist David Brooks emphasized the value of empathizing with others to become successful, a skill that all politicians have.

“What explains success in life, what should you actually be thinking about if you’re a college student? Well, you should think about IQ and studying and getting the skills, that’s obvious. But you should also think about traits like mindsight – the ability to look into other people’s minds and really tell what’s going on there. That’s the skill that politicians have.”

So there may be something to be said for the networking and interaction abilities that they pick up in their undergraduate years — but is that just a byproduct of coming from families that instill those capabilities and tend to have the money to pay dues that average more than a $1,000 a semester?

Well, it probably is, but even then despite their reputation for being wild partiers and socialites, fraternity brothers and sisters surprisingly tend to outperform the undergraduate body as a whole.

In fact, literally every school on this list did just that.

And the higher the Greek engagement on campus, the higher the GPA

We also found that there’s a statistically significant correlation between the percentage of Greek participation and the Greeks’ GPAs, which some attribute to better study habits, organizational skills, and external motivation to get good grades.

Greek organizations maintain minimum GPA standards, and the IFC rewards its members who excel academically by giving annual awards to the chapters and individuals who achieve excellence in academics.

At some universities, the organizations serve as set study groups and provide mentors for various mentors, hosting regular study times and study sessions — some even mandate study time and retain a catalog of previous exams to assist members.

Additionally, belonging to a fraternity or sorority increases one’s chances of completing a degree, with 71% of Greeks graduating versus 50% of non-Greeks.

We can’t know for sure why there’s a correlation between Greek presence on a campus and its’ members GPAs, but we suspect it has to do with prestige and competition — or simply that engagement is good for academics, like with we do with college football.

The organizational bodies and boards post their semester grades, and it may be that more competitors increase the quality of the academic competition.

Here’s a full list of the 50 best universities for Greek life

College	Chapters	Greek Involvement	Mean GPA
Alabama	59	34.0%	3.33
Cornell	62	33.0%	3.35
UIUC	78	25.0%	3.26
UGA	55	23.0%	3.43
Mizzou	54	28.6%	3.25
University of Michigan	65	17.0%	3.45
USC	50	27.0%	3.35
University of Florida	56	15.0%	3.38
University of Oklahoma	42	31.2%	3.19
UK	50	29.0%	3.29
IU	67	18.0%	3.14
Ole Miss	38	42.0%	3.10
Penn State	76	17.0%	3.22
University of Texas at Austin	56	14.0%	3.31
University of Maryland, College Park	61	17.0%	3.28
UNC	45	20.0%	3.34
University of Washington Seattle	52	15.5%	3.37
OSU	68	10.0%	3.31
University of Arkansas	38	30.0%	3.29
USC	48	24.0%	3.16
LSU	46	22.3%	3.12
ASU	59	9.0%	3.25
KSU	43	19.0%	3.30
University of Wisconsin, Madison	52	13.0%	3.26
UD	50	20.0%	n/a
University of Tennessee	42	18.0%	3.19
JMU	41	18.0%	3.00
University of Nebraska, Lincoln	46	20.0%	2.89
UConn	40	15.0%	3.27
University of South Dakota	13	22.0%	3.28
University of Rhode Island	30	20.0%	3.07
Rutgers	58	10.0%	3.19
University of Iowa	34	17.0%	3.03
University of Minnesota Twin Cities	48	7.0%	3.22
University of Oregon	35	11.0%	3.10
University of Colorado Boulder	36	13.0%	n/a
WVU	35	10.0%	2.88
University of North Dakota	20	12.0%	3.10
University of Vermont	18	10.0%	3.09
University of Maine	28	13.0%	2.95
BU	25	13.0%	n/a
University of New Hampshire	22	14.0%	n/a
University of New Mexico	13	5.0%	3.24
Boise State	18	6.0%	3.10
UNLV	28	5.0%	2.84
University of Montana	10	6.0%	2.92
University of Utah	17	5.0%	3.09
University of Wyoming	14	n/a	n/a
University of Alaska, Anchorage	6	n/a	n/a
University of Hawaii at Manoa	4	n/a	n/a

Never miss an opportunity that’s right for you.

Author

David Luther

David Luther was the Content Marketing Editor for the Zippia Advice blog. He developed partnerships with external reporting agencies in addition to generating original research and reporting for the Zippia Career Advice blog. David obtained his BA from UNC Chapel Hill.

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