LOL - I was membership chair for my chapter and then president - which in Pi Phi at that time were the two officers privy to membership selection (the offices have since been reworked). I did all the re-inviting via computer program. It really wasn't that hard to manage! heh. I doubt it added 2 minutes, at least from the chapter side. And Panhel never said anything about it like it was a problem for them.

:) I do seem to recall some discussion that W&L has a few recruitment practices/traditions that aren't necessarily the same as others. And hey - if it works for them, great. The only way I could see it actually working out is if PNMs were allowed to rank all chapters every night - even if they didn't attend. 99% of campuses out there don't allow that - they only allow PNMs to rank the chapters they attended.

Plus re-inviting just makes a big ole mess for trying to keep up with how many women chapters have in their pool vs. how many they are really releasing. Kinda makes my head spin from a statistical perspective! :D

Typically from a release figure perspective, is the number that a chapter can invite back based on the number of PNMs overall or simply the number of PNMs who attended the last round?

It's based on many different numbers. (Does that help? ha!) Most importantly it is based on how many women a chapter needs at Preference to have the best chance at making Quota. Also based on an estimate of how many PNMs will actually complete the process so the PNMs can be spread out appropriately amongst the chapters. So the number of PNMs attending the previous round weighs in, but not as a primary factor. It's all a function of making sure there are enough women at Preference. Does that make sense?

I think I understand what you are saying from an overall perspective kind of thing: preference numbers drive the rest of the releases. But, what I'm trying to get at is that if a group can't effectively re-invite, how do they compensate from too many PNMs not returning to a given round if their target number is already getting too small?

If they got dropped by girls after second, but could re-invite them for third, they'd be in better shape for pref, right?

Well, two things help with that situation.

#1 - A chapter won't be releasing down to their Preference number on the first round. So if a chapter underperforms (as compared to previous years) in that first round, they will be asked to either not release any the next round or to release fewer than originally planned. If they underperform the night before Preference, they are in a bit of trouble (if they use A/R rather than Priority - see next). But this underperforming is rare.

#2 - Flex Lists. These are used only with Priority as opposed to Accept/Regret. They are the backup plan and in all actuality are re-invitations. So if a chapter has too few PNMs accepting to the next round, some extra PNMs can be added back to the invitation list. Flexing is done before invitations are given to PNMs, so they never know if they were flexed or not.

Thanks! I definitely understood the first part but the second part is definitely illuminating for my understanding of flex lists. I thought flex lists were just extended lists of girls who came back to that round who the chapter would be happy to have back if they didn't have to make any cuts. I didn't realize that chapters could put girls on them who had not attended that round.

Well, they can't. Sorry - I should have clarified. :D Flex plus lists contain women who (1) attended the current round, (2) are not on the invitation list for the next round, (3) the chapter would invite if they could/need. The reason I called them "re-inviting" is because technically those women were released during the current round. And unless a chapter needs them, they won't be invited back.

Sorry for the confusion!

Speaking from my experience with a very large and very competitive Recruitment, re-inviting a PNM who you dropped or who dropped you in a previous round can be done. With the ICS program it is not difficult because all you need to do is go to a previous round's invitation/selection screen where the PNMs name was still listed as an option. (I don't know about any of the other programs used for Recruitment.) However, it does not happen often and only when there is some sort of unique/extreme circumstance.

With that being said though, switching from the old accept/regret to preferential ranking has made this more complicated. The reason being PNMs rank the chapters they attended immediately following the parties -- before the chapters invitation lists are submitted. The PNM would have no idea that XYZ chapter wants to re-invite her and so she wouldn't include them on her ranking list.

Therefore a phone call to Panhellenic is necessary. If the PNM doesn't have a full schedule the re-inviting chapter can be easily added, assuming the PNM wants to accept. If the PNMs schedule is already full, Panhellenic can give her the option to accept the re-invite then cut one of the chapters on her schedule. Or if a PNM had withdrawn from Recruitment (either voluntarily or totally cut) then Panhellenic needs to contact her otherwise she wouldn't even know she had an invitation out there.

Numbers of UGA Sororities
 

Got a copy of this forwarded to me:

Sorority # New Members Total Size
Alpha Chi Omega 58 214
Alpha Delta Pi 60 226
Alpha Gamma Delta 63 209
Alpha Omicron Pi 61 204
Chi Omega 61 197
Delta Delta Delta 62 200
Delta Gamma 40 146
Delta Zeta 63 198
Gamma Phi Beta 58 206
Kappa Alpha Theta 61 213
Kappa Delta 62 220
Kappa Kappa Gamma 60 218
Phi Mu 59 224
Pi Beta Phi 62 196
Sigma Delta Tau 56 160
Sigma Kappa 61 182
Zeta Tau Alpha 58 198

Thank you for sharing.

Thank you for posting it!

I'm not sure why you felt the need to include chapter size...

I can't speak to tiers or stigma, but there's been a lot of progress by a lot of groups in membership.

It looks like pretty good news, really. It might be a realistic goal that every group be at total sometime this year.