Voting with SO many girls involved

Zeta drops based off looks/your Instagram. 80% have to say you’re hot enough to come back.

Most houses will invite legacies back at least one round.

Being a legacy doesn’t necessarily matter but some sororities are shallow and will drop you solely based off of looks. If that scares you, listen to what your conscience is telling you.

My chapter considers voting ritual so we are not allowed to talk about it after the fact and we are not allowed to tell anyone the way in which we vote. If a member is caught talking about it after they are sent to standards.
It honestly is hard to remember every PNM. One time one of my sisters left a note in the bathroom with girls names and notes about the ones she met and my recruitment chair found it between rounds and she was livid. And I'm not going to lie, I confused two girls whose names started with S. The one I didn't think would be a good fit for my chapter was the one there on bid day and sure enough, she dropped yhe year after.
I talked to my best friend who is in another chapter and the way they vote is not at all like how my chapter votes. Hers was more by badge order and writing and mine is more by bump group and discussing. Ultimately the way everyone votes gets translated (not sure if that is the right word) into numbers and gets put into some kind of computer system algorithm.
Although voting is considered ritual, I wish the PNMs knew more about it and it wasn't so secretive. In my chapter are only allowed to talk about a PNM for a certain amount of time and we are not allowed to vote in a negative way if no one says anything negative about the PNM.
Voting is exhausting and time consuming. There were times we stayed at the house late into the night to vote.
I wish PNMs understood more that we are in this together. There no matter which tier you're in you will be disappointed during recruitment when a girl you loved didn't come back to your house. Also, PNMs are sad when they are not asked back to a house, which ultimately usually comes down to an algorithm. I feel like it is harder for PNMs because they are not told this. Just because a house didn't ask you back almost never means that they didn't like you. It means that the girls you talked to thought you were a great fit for another house or they wanted you back but the computer numbers just didn't match up. Only one or two times do I remember our chapter being like Oh hell no! For a girl.
Voting and recruitment may seem like a lot but the houses have it down to a science.

i don’t want to get too into how my chapter votes bc it’s ritual but i’ll explain the gist. my house votes similar to the poster above.

after round 1, our computer chair compiles a list of all the PNMs who went thru and they’re divided into the freshmen list and the upperclassmen list (this way upperclassmen don’t have to compete with freshmen). each pnm has a score and legacies are highlighted in a different color. we actually have to be very careful scoring legacies as my house’s system still places them at the top of our list and if we accidentally score one too high early on, we won’t be able to drop them later.
the computer chairs then scroll down the list of the girls we will be inviting to the next round, and only actives who rushed the PNM and girls who personally met/know the PNM are allowed to speak up. they can either advocate to put the PNM higher up or lower on the list for a variety of reasons (not a good fit, rep/grade risk, etc). this is why it’s important to have friends in house who can pull for you OR make a good impression on the girl who rushes you so she remembers your name. we rush sooo many girls and after a while all the convos and names start to blur, even when you take good notes. i go into voting with a couple names of my favorite girls i rushed that day and i only really look for their names on the list. this is how a PNM can slip thru the cracks and not get invited back.
this is also where drama ensues and voting can last HOURS.
the craziest argument i’ve seen in my chapter was over a sophomore PNM who our rush chair was obsessed w/ and who had lots of (popular) inhouse friends but was equally hated by the other half of my pledge class and the older pledge classes for being a mean girl. our star rushers (popular juniors lmao) all threatened to drop in tears if we invited this girl to sisterhood. she was ultimately not invited back lol.
so yeah, for hours we’ll move girls up and down the list until it’s finalized. with pnm’s getting moved up and down, some girls hover near the cut off line or move further below it. it sucks but it really is a numbers game. and the more selective a house is, the less girls they can invite back.

This is the most interesting thread I've ever seen on this site lol

Also I can tell you my house is EXTREMELY good at being able to tell what house a PNM will most likely fit in the best. We usually have an idea of roughly 1-3 houses we can see the PNM in, and this is actually a very common reason girls get dropped.

It's actually more beneficial for us to drop PNMs we know will fit in better elsewhere, even if we loved them. The reason is that we have a limited amount we can invite back, so we don't want to waste any invitations on a PNM who we know will ultimately never pick our house.

For reference, I am in a house that is not ridiculously competitive to get into, but still moderately selective. We drop quite a few top PNMs and I think these girls actually get kind of butthurt about it because we're deemed "lower" than the top houses, but again it's because we know they're going to go to a top house. Gotta focus on the girls we have a realistic chance of getting.

Like others have said it’s ritual, but basically each active only votes on the girls she speaks to each round. A preliminary list is created based strictly on the numerical rankings. An elected membership committee then meets and moves PNMs around based on grades, reputation, etc. The chapter then sees the list once and is allowed to submit a form to either move a PNM to the drop list or the invite list. The membership committee reviews these and makes changes and after that the list is final. There’s absolutely no group discussion about individual PNMs. It’s a very fair way to do it, but also super boring since there’s no drama lol.

My house is lower middle so I’m not sure what would be different if we had more hometown friends/top PNMs etc coming through. However we do have reps from nationals there every year and they’re super uptight about us following the rules.

question: i rushed last year with all the online stuff. i had what i would consider a really high gpa and before philanthropy, hence before ever talking to me, i was dropped by one OR house kinda randomly but all the “grades” houses kept me. no i didn’t know anyone in the house (apart from actives reaching out before no contact) but i didn’t know anyone in any house, so even though im very happy in the house im in ive always wondered why i was dropped that early. ive talked to other people and a lot of people had a similar experience with this house specifically, and i was surprised bc i would consider a lot of them having been top pnms. i was a non-bama legacy for a house but i think anyone could tell really easily i would not have fit in the chapter at bama (it was a looks house & kill it queens but that’s not really me) so i wouldn’t think that’s why i was dropped but idk