Sorority Recruitment

LISTEN UP. PART 1. You think you were screwed over in sorority rush? Before RFM in 2003, rush was incredibly unfair and even PNMs who went all the way through prefs were dropped by sororities and ended up with no bids.

The old way worked like this, and this was on every college campus:

PNMs decided which sororities they would drop, and were only required to attend all houses the first round. After that, they had to narrow down their choices throughout the week and were required to drop houses each round, but they were not required to attend anywhere they didn't want to, and could drop any house at any time, whether right away or in later rounds. But the houses invited every single PNM back except the few real outliers, knowing full well who they actually liked and who they were absolutely going to drop at the very end. This was so that they would look popular with very full houses and big return rates at each round, so they carried a bunch of girls just for show with no real intent to bid them. There was no malicious intent, it was just how the game was played. Appearances had to be kept. So some sororities stayed on the PNMs schedules all week, especially the highly desired ones, and PNMs were thinking they had a real shot at a bid. But come time for pref round where every PNM invited must be on the sorority's bid list, the houses made the HUGE drops, only inviting back those PNMs who they had known all along were the ones they really wanted on their bid lists. Really, really, big drops. Meanwhile, the PNMs had been dropping other houses all week, houses where they actually were wanted and had a real chance at a bid at a good sorority, and so were left with no houses come prefs. Done and out of rush. At the same time, some pretty good houses were dropped by PNMs, and didn't get a fair chance of being able to rush them because the better recruiting houses had led so many PNMs down the garden path. Houses were screwed just as much as all those dropped PNMS. Another kicker: no COB back then, so PNMs had no way to try again for a year until formal recruitment again, individual sororities did not get to grow their memberships, and overall sorority membership did not grow. It sucked for almost everyone.

So weird having Pan Hellenic reps and national consultants at UVA for recruitment and posting on greek rank.

Old and all dried up

this was an interesting and informative thread from last year's rush that deserves a bump for all the questions we're getting lately.

so is the pledge class number set each year the same for every chapter? Then after everyone hits quota they can take more?