Number each round?

Yes, each house has a different number they can invite back based on their stats of the past 4-5 years of recruitment. These numbers are given to them by a panhellenic advisor and not made up by the houses themselves. Strong recruiting houses that trend with a high percentage back of pnm's must cut the most, less strong houses can invite back more accordingly. The numbers are looked at from round to round and adjusted to how many pnm's are staying in recruitment and how their rankings are going. Sororities with lower return rates will have more parties to accomodate more pnm's, and will be the ones who take more quota additions. But this does not mean these sororities are bad! Or that they do not offer a wonderful experience with quality members! And any sorority may cut even more than their required amount, which can leave them short at pref and having to snap before bid day.

I want to point out that RFM is MUCH better than rush used to be. Before RFM, PNM's could drop any houses at any time in the process. They would pick up their invitations in the morning of each round, and accept or decline as they wished. A lot of PNM's, intent on only certain sororities, would not give many other houses a chance, and even though they were allowed to return up to a certain number of houses in the next round, they would not "maximize their options" by accepting all the invitations they could. And the sororities only made some cuts early on, the obvious ones for them, but didn't really have to make their main heavy cuts in the early rounds like now, so would delay decisions and keep asking lots of girls back from round to round. Many of these girls never had a real chance at a bid but the sororities weren't having to consider them so early in the process, and were carrying so many so that their house would look really popular for having well-attended parties ("high return rates"). Well, this went on until right before pref, when sororities finally had to make the final yes-or-no decisions. Sororities will not ask anyone to pref they can't see as a sister because everyone at pref will be on their on their bid list somewhere, so here would come the really HUGE drops. Heart breaking for PNM's who, unfortunately, had been dropping other sororities left and right, ignoring ones that they actually had a real shot at, so that now they were left with no houses at all for pref. Done, and out of the process. And then for other PNM's, even after pref they could still end up with no bid due to something called 'cross-cutting.' When a PNM didn't match exactly to her pref houses, and quota was final and there was no such thing as quota additions, the cross-cut girls, who were still wanted by their pref houses, could not receive a bid. No bid day after all that. Devastating. And Bama had three prefs back then but hardly any PNM's wanted a bid from their 3rd choice so didn't go to that pref. It was a much worse process all around. But now, with sororities having to make decisions earlier on, PNM's are released from houses where they really don't have a chance so they can focus on houses where they do have a chance. And when they rank both their pref houses, or just the one if that's all they have, they are guaranteed a bid due to quota additions. So much better. Really.