Exactly. The Greek Community probably won't miss out on the great "unknown" girls, just certain chapters will.

This is the challenge that popular chapters at competitive schools face. They have to figure out how to have quality conversations with PNMs to get the most information in their limited time so they can make the best decisions in membership selection. Chapters can choose their members however they want. If they are only taking girls they know or going to cut everyone who isn't a "10" (looks wise), that's their prerogative.

Ditto. Also, I don't think RFM changes the process for those chapters anyway. These chapters made their bid lists before recruitment started before RFM was even invented. They know who they want, and making them release women they don't want early in the process hasn't changed that in the least.

Ain't that the truth. They just have to deal with the fact that more people are going to realize it and that those people will stop kidding themselves with "I know ABC would have taken me if they didn't have so many legacies but they are still super nice!"

/Pardon my lane swerve/

Is RMF working? If I am correct, the idea of RMF is to get girls interested in chapters that they normally wouldn't look at a second time. Isn't the idea to also help chapters that have traditionally been struggling with numbers and recruitment?

I had a conversation with a GC sorority member where I asked if RMF is helping with retention. On a couple of campuses (I won't mention them publically, pm me if you want specifics) it seems as if chapters that have traditionally not met quota are now meeting quota, but not retaining their pledges. In these situations, is RMF really helping the chapters?

That sounds like a chapter problem rather than a recruitment problem if a chapter is experiencing a lot of women depledging/withdrawing. That's not something RFM can address. Those chapters need to identify why women are depledging and fix those problems. If a chapter is truly doing their best to integrate new members into the chapter, depledging should be pretty rare and for clear-cut reasons.

Or, do you mean that chapters experience a lot of no-shows on bid day, meaning women feel "forced" to rank all of their preference chapters and end up matching with a chapter they don't intend to join? I know someone from a chapter like this (not my alma mater, not my sorority). She told me that Panhellenic tells the PNMs they have to rank all of their preference chapters, so her chapter MATCHES quota, but they get a lot of no-shows come bid day. She said one year, only a third of those that matched came to bid day. That's just really deflating for a chapter that doesn't need any more blows. Panhellenic isn't doing them any favors by trying to force PNMs their way.

I have heard this about a lot of campuses. I'm wondering if girls are being pressured to stay in recruitment when they want to drop out. Maybe they're half-heartedly taking bids to join in the excitement, then dropping out soon afterwards? Maybe some Panhellenics are under pressure to see that everyone gets quota and they're leaning on the RCs.

It's so tough to be an 18-year-old PNM and not know if you should really take a shot at that bid or back off for another year. Every situation is different.

Oh--violetpretty, yes, several schools are seeing lots of no-shows who had accepted bids.

I think retention may have nothing to do with sorority membership, but to do with the kinds of people who are attending college now, and the schools they attend. Maybe there is an influence with membership, but I think a lot of under-prepared people are going to colleges with very liberal enrollment policies and just not doing well in school. I am not saying that all first time college students aren't capable, but honestly there are lots of people who shouldn't be in a four year college straight out of high school and could be helped by a year or two at a community or junior college so they aren't taking remedial english and math courses.

How many schools are opening up new Greek systems from what was a community or junior college a decade or less ago? In some areas the college or university still offers classes for the community/junior college set and those students are in school and joining orgs. I kind of wonder how many students leave after the fall semester because of failing out, because I know it happens at my University and we do have a lot of support and involvement, so other places I can't imagine how many fall through the cracks and that is just accepted.

Of course I'm supporting my idea of not letting freshmen join before school starts and giving them a semester to orient themselves and succeed with events put on by Panhellenic/Greek Life to garner interest and promote academics and for life membership.

I wasn't referring to academics in my discussion of depledging/withdrawls. I was thinking more of "I just don't think I fit" or "It's not worth the money" type of depledging. The people who voluntarily leave their GLOs.

Gotcha, but I still think academics affects retention and membership. If you can't bid women, initiate them, have them active, or as officers, you have issues with (wo)man power and chapter health. If people can't be involved, or lose financial aid, that has an effect.

I guess I didn't really think of that because my school does not have a liberal admissions policy and because our recruitment is deferred, so the people who really go crazy first semester and flunk out aren't going through recruitment. During my time as a collegian and as an adviser, I can't think of anyone who withdrew/depledged because they flunked out of school.

The other reason I though of voluntary withdrawls/depledging is because I interpretted Lane Sig's question as certain chapters experiencing higher amounts of depledging/withdrawls than others. Though, at a school with a liberal admissions policy, there will be a wide variety of GPAs and you could argue that the "popular" chapters are getting the PNMs with the higher HS GPAs and therefore, less likely to flunk out, but you still never know with just the high school GPA to go on. I'm not sure what he was getting at.

YAY deferred recruitment!

Hopefully he will come back and tell us.

I also have thoughts about the influence of living in a dorm first year as opposed to a chapter house, and how RAs and other people who are not members can see behavior or warning signs we may not, or we may not want to deal with for whatever reason. I fully admit many sororities have issues with PR & RM when it comes to dealing with issues (alcohol for example) and that we often don't handle things until there is a huge incident. On the other hand we have a lot of over programming and requirements that don't work with today's college student and are not effective.

It could be the emphasis on filling your bid card without an equal emphasis on NOT listing a chapter that you would NOT want to join. That explains a lot of the bid day/first week no-shows and drops. Whether that's an issue of the NMs not fitting in or NMs wanting to be in a "higher tier" chapter is uncertain. My level of disgust for the "tier" system is high though so I may be biased.

I'd say that if it further along during the NM period that people are dropping then it's an issue of retention and the chapter should be looking at what they're doing wrong.

Well, same, but I won't pretend like it doesn't matter to some people.

I know it does, I just want to slap them upside the head until they realise how stupid and counterproductive it is. (Oh but it's ok because we're top tier. *slap* No *slap* it's *slap not. *slap*)

It hurts Greeks as a whole to perpetuate the idea that some of us are better than others, just as it hurts us to claim we're superior to the great un-washed Non-Greek masses. And it's something that the chapters AND the PNMs need education on.

The worst part is, that someone, upon reading this would say that I'm only jealous and miss the point entirely.

/meh sorry, pet-peeve

That is exactly what is happening. Rho Gamma's and Panhel are persuading
these girls to stick it out even though they got dropped by their "favorite" chapters early on. They go through the whole process and pressured not to suicide and on bid day they accept a bid from a chapter they didn't really want. Lots of these girls never really open up and give it a chance. Sometimes there is nothing really a chapter can do to make a girl want to stay. Especially when they see their friends are in the chapters they wanted to join. Surprisingly this past recruitment we had like 10 girls who had pledge chapters the year before go back through trying to get the chapter they didn't get the first time. 10 girls is a lot of my school which is fairly small.

Though it is unfortunate RFM doesn't have much to do with it. Truth is most of these flaky girls would have probably gotten cut from the top chapters anyway. The problem is with the types of girls in this generation.
Now I just graduated from college this year so these new girls are in my generation but I dont understand the way they think. I was a rho gam this past recruitment and I have noticed a lot of these girls feel entitled to receive bids to chapters they want. And these arent the girls that are legacies and have 3 or 4 recs, these are the girls that just decided they to go through yesterday cause all of their friends were doing it or registered for recruitment late even though they knew they want to rush before school even started. I dont know how many times we kept saying keep an open mind. My sorority wasnt my first choice or my second for that matter but I gave it a chance and it turned out to be the best group for me. Until girls learn to keep an open mind there will always be retention issues. Cause closed minded of girls never make good members.