aepi, chi phi, sigma nu, pi kapp, phi tau, theta chi

Sigma Nu throws bangers
Theta Chi has frat stars
AEPi/Chi Phi has attractive brothers

All of these are mid tier houses with different strengths.

Phi Tau and Pi kapp are probably lower mid

I feel that these houses comprise the solid middle tier, neccessary for Greek Row's functioning. Rather than ranking I'll just give a pro and con.

Theta Chi: Try hard as try hard gets but on the rise. House setup is terrible for parties.

Sigma Nu: Some of the campuse's largest parties and also on the rise. Odd mix of fratty and not fratty.

Chi Phi: Have a good rep in general and as the attractive house. Parties are meh and their spring class was larger than their fall...

Phi Tau: Defitniely chill guys not too concerned about rep. Brotherhood is segmented and a little too try hard.

Pi Kapp: Nice house and a solid rep, with a decent amount of good looking guys. Parties are meh, but not the worst.

AePi: Nice brothers and a somewhat decent rep. Bad party setups but they do draw some occasional crowds.

If I were a dude I'd like to be in any of these over the large ones like ATO or Phi Psi

Who even cares. There aren't many differences between these houses or really any differences between frat guys at cal in general. They're all a bunch of smart soft kids that think they're hard and get super into this ranking system to validate their self worth. The only house that doesn't fall into this category is zete which is comprised of a bunch of athletes and washed up athletes that wouldn't even be going here if it weren't for that

I agree that zete has a lot of athletes but most of their house isn't athletes not even close. They're just actually like cool people. Notice they aren't as douchey as SAE, DKE, or Fiji. It's because they aren't trying to validate themselves they're actually a house in which there aren't a lot of nerds in. But what does it matter they're gone now and they're gonna be tiny since they don't have open rush

let's be real we go to cal we're all goobers on the inside. if we could all just accept that and be friends greek life would be so much more fun