Panhellenic Recruitment

About

The Panhellenic Council is the governing body for the 11 National Panhellenic Council sororities at Cornell University. Panhellenic's mission is to foster supportive environment, which values scholarship, philanthropy, leadership, and personal growth through a unified sisterhood. Our sororities are values based social organizations, providing members with a tight-knit community of peers, and personal growth opportunities through leadership development and service projects.

The Cornell Sorority and Fraternity community dates to the first months of University operation during the autumn of 1868. Cornell's co-founder and first president, Andrew Dickson White, was a strong promoter of fraternal organizations as a means of teaching self-governance to students. Today, we strive to continue that ethos.

Creed

We, as undergraduate members of women’s fraternities, stand for good scholarship, for guarding of good health, for maintenance of fine standards, and for serving, to the best of our ability, our college community. Cooperation for furthering fraternity life, in harmony with its best possibilities, is the ideal that shall guide our fraternity activities.

We, as fraternity women, stand for service through the development of character inspired by the close contact and deep friendship of individual fraternity and Panhellenic life. The opportunity for wide and wise human service, through mutual respect and helpfulness, is the tenet by which we strive to live.

Recruitment

New member recruitment is the process through which interested individuals join a sorority through the process of mutual selection. Potential new members meet members from every chapter, listen to stories of sisterhood, learn about philanthropy, and ultimately decide which sorority is the right one for them.

Membership recruitment consists of four rounds of events. These rounds become more formal and longer as the process progresses. For more information regarding recruitment, check out the Cornell Panhellenic Association Website.

There is not a minimum GPA for Panhellenic recruitment. Individual sororities may use GPA as a consideration when selecting whom to invite back to events but there is not a restriction to register for the process. There is also not a credit number. As part of the decision faculty, students, and alumni made in the 1950s to be a deferred recruitment campus, the rule is that a student must have completed one full semester on our campus. The only exception is a transfer student who we know has completed at least one semester elsewhere. FYSA students which means First Year Spring Admits are not eligible to join the spring semester they begin Cornell.

Cornell Panhellenic does not collect legacy information nor recommendation letters. Any information such as legacy or recommendation letters can be sent directly to the chapter. This practice is not common at Cornell.