Oh for the love of Mike, how many of these posts and error-filled responses are there going to be this spring?

OP - read adpiucf's most excellent and detailed post on preparing for recruitment. The search function'll take you right to it.

As for the suggestions/pronouncements by mixer and Gatorbaby, No. No. No. Pay attention to the people who've been around a while and who have solid advice to give you. If you haven't done so, get good photos, get your resume polished, and get to the nearest Alumnae Panhellenic and get cracking on securing recommendations.

No one here will give you any specifics on membership selection. We will, however, give detailed information on the need for recommendations, how to converse, how to conduct yourself prior to recruitment, etc. And some GCers even know how to play "dress the pnm". Not this one, however.

One last thing: good luck! If you maximize your opportunities, and prepare well, there is a possibility for a happy ending. Not guaranteed - I wrote "possibility."

Fixed it....

Good luck! Read the thread in my signature, in case you haven't already found it. It's a labor of love that I add to annually based on the great advice of fellow GC members and the new recruitment situations that pop up each fall!

I didn't think reccommendations were that pivotal in a decision. In fact, I secured recs for all the houses at UF (nearly...excepting DPhiE, I believe), and I was dropped by 9/15 houses after round 2.
So, from my understanding and personal experience, recs can only pull you through to round 2. From then on, you're on your own. Get them if you have the time, que sera if you don't.

The biggest thing that helped me in Zeta was a girl I knew from back home, not a random recommendation.

So, if you really want to get started an make yourself ready for Rush..some tips:
1) Clean up that Facebook! Make sure you have an appropriate Fb picture, quotes, etc. Of course don't change who you are or what you're about but nobody wants to see curse words or that kind of thing all over your page.
2) Talk to some girls you might've known in highschool who are now in college. I've gotten a few messages like this on Facebook and I'm more than happy to answer questions. They can sometimes give you some tips and pointers on Rush specific to your school.
3) Don't take Rush (as a process when you're going through it) super seriously. Do your best and be yourself and that's all anybody can ask of you. As mentioned previously, I was dropped by a little under half of the houses after Round 2. It happens - these things are arbitrary and/or I wasn't a good fit for the majority. The one thing I can say is that I was proud to be myself during all of the rounds and was pleasantly surprised and delighted when Zeta accepted me. I was assured I had made the right decision because I was myself throughout the entire process. :)

And if you didn't have recs, you might have been dropped by 13/15 chapters. You really don't know. And again, the weight that recs carry depends on the sororities and the school you attend.

And you really don't know this for sure, either. Unless the chapter HONESTLY shared with you the reason(s) that you were selected for membership.

Gatorbaby, Please do not give advice about recs. until you have been thru recruitment on the "other"(sorority) side. You have a lot yet to experience and learn from the sister side of things, and I am telling you that you are not correct in your assumptions.

Give advice on appropriate recruitment attire for pnms at colleges in Florida, share your favorite conversation topics, warn girls about what is and isn't appropriate on facebook, but right now, don't give advice about recs.

Serious Facebook Advice: When you join a new network (so say the UF network this summer) unfortunately it AUTOMATICALLY sets everything on your facebook viewable to that network. Most people DO NOT realize this. Most PNMs in my experience have completely open facebooks (they recently joined their college's network, and privacy settings are not something most people check frequently), and i doubt that is a conscious decision on their part. You MUST go back and manually redo your privacy settings. Not only is this rush advice, but safety/privacy advice.

Rush FB Advice: Clean it up. Ideally, you have a pristine facebook. Next to ideal, you have it set to just friends (but there is a good chance you are friends with a chapter member, so just make them clean)

Avoid booze, boys, bibles, and bank account talk during rush, but hopefully your rho gamma or whatever it is called tells you those most basic rules

Having a recommendation doesn't guarantee you anything. You are using anecdotal evidence from your limited experience to council other women which could torpedo their recruitments. Like ASTalumna06 said, without recs, you might have had no invitations. There are many organizations which REQUIRE a recommendation or use the lack of a recommendation as an easy cut for the first round. Sorry you were released despite having recommendations, but there's no use telling others that they aren't needed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AOII Angel (Post 2050946) Having a recommendation doesn't guarantee you anything. You are using anecdotal evidence from your limited experience to council other women which could torpedo their recruitments. Like ASTalumna06 said, without recs, you might have had no invitations. There are many organizations which REQUIRE a recommendation or use the lack of a recommendation as an easy cut for the first round. Sorry you were released despite having recommendations, but there's no use telling others that they aren't needed.

Her argument would actually make more sense if she didn’t have any recs, and was still invited back to 6 houses. But how she could have recs to nearly all of the houses and then tell someone else not to get them is beyond me.

I actually read over this again…

.. and realized that she actually said, “I didn’t think recs were that important, but I still got one for almost every house… you need recs to get past the first round… but you don’t need to get them if you don’t have the time.”

Uh… der… what?

This is just another symptom of neoism -thinking you know what you're talking about.

Completely agree. She has no idea how much good those little pieces of paper did for her. PNMs think that if they don't assure you a bid to your favorite house, then they didn't help at all. I know many a friend from HS that was cut after day one from every house at LSU. They had the whole package but no recs.