A-freakin-men. Unfortunately, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

This. 100%.

While there still lots of naive PNMs out there, there are those who read these boards, have friends active in Greek Life, have moms who volunteer, etc. They know how the system works, and they know what game to play. I actually think this will continue to get worse as it becomes more and more common knowledge how quota additions work.

I wish it were but several of us have seen that happen--check the thread about "Getting a Bid Someplace that You Didn't Pref"--many times. It's got to be a bad surprise to go to prefs at sororities A and B and end up with a bid from C, whose parties you haven't attended since the first day. Apparently, this happens for several reasons but rather than recount them all, I'm just referring you to the thread.

Many times? Really? That's such an unusual circumstance that the only way I could possibly see that happening is a chapter offering a 'snap bid" to someone they have not seen since the OH round. I'm sure some chapters do that but a far more likely scenario would be that a PNM who dropped out without having signed a pref card, and is therefore eligible for COR, gets an invitation to attend a chapter activity that is also an informal recruitment event.

One of my closest sisters attended XY and DEF on Pref night, then decided after attending the parties she did not want a bid from DEF, so she listed XY and Gamma Phi. We were her second choice, and she was bummed for about five minutes, and then spent the last 30 years or so happily ever after. Had she ISP'd, she would have had nothing and with all chapters making quota and over total, would have had to wait a year to try again, and who knows if she would have gotten a bid a year later? That's the far more common scenario of getting a bid from a chapter you did not pref.

I didn't realize that quota was ever based on a share of whoever signed up rather than who preffed.

I don't follow too many campuses, but since I've been paying attention, I haven't seen quota size decline that much over the years relative to the pool in recruitment generally. I mention that to note, that yes, if quota on a certain campus used to be 80 and now it's 60 and the size of the PNM pool is the same, then, I'd have to think that meant more girls used to get their top choice. But if quota has been in about the same range for decades or has been increasing, as it seems to be at the campuses I follow, then it's hard to see how the system is decreasing the number of girls who get bids to their top choices.

I tend to think the release figure and quota range issues just shift when PNMs might receive disappointing news. Now they get dropped by top chapters earlier. But now rather than getting cross cut and getting snapped or COB, they get added to a regular bid list of a house they preffed, but they may get added to a group that wasn't their top choice.

I think the sort of bummer for the chapters is that while their recruitment numbers are better, member retention still isn't perfect. But, and I've got no data to support this really, my instincts tell me that retention is no worse than it used to be at the chapters that snapped and COBed. I could be wrong about this, and it could be that the experience of getting dropped completely made a girl more grateful for a snap or COB bid to XYZ than she is being a made a XYZ QA without the conscious awareness that she didn't make the cut at her other choices, even though the panhellenic system of bid matching tried hard to put her there.

The one thing that I'd stress to PNMs is that there's really no way to game the system to get your top choice. Only maximize your options if you sincerely would be happy in your last choice on the bid card. From a Greek Life official perspective any bid is the same positive outcome, but from a PNM perspective, it is not.

ETA: Carnation, isn't the only penalty for SIPing not being eligible for QA? If you don't list a chapter on your bid card, you don't face penalties for not accepting a bid, correct?

In the real world, what are the chances that a girl's first choice is the chapter that she'd get QAed to when she wouldn't have matched there by regular bid matching? Isn't it tiny unless her taste run counter to the PNM pool generally?

EATA: I guess I should clarify that I'm thinking of cases in which a girl is preffing at least one group that she regards as being significantly less desirable than the rest. If she's preffing the three groups regarded as the most desirable on campus, then I'd guess her chances of being QA are equal at each. But when there's a mix of chapter popularity on her bid card, isn't she most likely to end up, if she is a QA, at one of the less popular chapters?

But what about the other chapters that she preffed? She'd have to not match to them through regular matching too, right? That seems odd.

When you say 25% drop before bid day and half don't see it through to graduation, do you mean at certain chapters or campus wide? If it's campus wide, that seems like something way beyond what any new quota system could fix.

Shoot, I just saw some stats on NPC groups in a magazine but I can't remember whose it was...I was surprised that across the board the percentage of NMs that don't initiate and the percentage of initiates who resign is really pretty low across the board- I think both numbers were in the 3-5% range for all NPCs reporting? A higher percentage of girls drop off the cheerleading squad at my kids' HS, even after their parents buy the $800 uniforms!

I think now that most groups initiate within the first semester, the vast majority of new members do get initiated.

And I think it's rare that members completely resign. I think what happens is that some chapters have more girls who seek early alum status or have to go inactive for various reasons. And there are some campuses at which a lot of student transfer out after a few years too. I doubt these members would show up as resigning in the stats, but they aren't still active members of the chapter.

I've been told that especially at small to middle-sized campus, what happens is that throughout their years of school some girls just kind of peter out of the sorority. One day people notice that "Sarah" and "Emily" haven't shown up for chapter activities for a couple of months and 2 months later into their senior year, 3 more are AWOL. And so on.

And these chapters just allow this? No one calls them into standards or votes to suspend them? If they do, they'd fall into that 3-5%.
I don't see the point of letting these girls stay on the roster but not pay dues or participate.

I was kind of wondering about that...I was talking with a friend the other day about a mutual friend of ours who seems to be slowly losing interest in her GLO, but I can't see her ever actually disaffiliating. If you just "go inactive," as in stop coming to chapter, or even stop paying dues, are you punished in any way? It probably varies by org, and is slightly off topic, although "dead weight" in a chapter also could be related to not getting a bid to your first choice.

Personally, I fall into the group that wound up being a much better fit for me than I ever could have imagined! The other group I preffed is a great organization, but now that I've had the experiences I have had in Chi O, I couldn't see myself anywhere else! This sense of fit only came after I had been an active, initiated sister for a semester or so- it is nothing like I could have imagined during recruitment!

I suspect if you didn't pay dues, there'd be a time limit before official action would take place. But if you have paid, there might not be a big incentive to run people completely off officially vs. hoping they'll become active again.

I've never been an officer or advisor so I want to make clear I'm just speculating.

Going back to the original topic ...

If you, as a PNM, are invited to pref at two chapters, it's because each of those two chapters sees you as a good fit for the chapter and would love to have you as a sister.

However, you may love chapter A and despise chapter B. It's a tough choice - do you suicide chapter A and give up the chance that you might be given a bid to chapter A as a quota addition? Or do you list both groups, and take the risk that you'll get a bid to chapter B?

In the latter case, what do you do if you do get a bid from chapter B? Do you rip up the bid card and run back to your dorm crying, or do you give the chapter a chance? I advise the latter in this case - give 'em a few weeks and then decide whether you want to initiate. During recruitment, you may only meet a small fraction of the sisters, and you have spent maybe a few hours with the chapter. The new member period gives you a chance to meet the rest of the chapter, including your pledge sisters, and make a more informed decision about whether to initiate. Hey, you're bound for a year anyway.

But recruitment is a very emotional time, and I can easily picture a young 17-year-old showing up for bid day absolutely SURE that she will get a bid from her first choice, and when she gets a bid from "only" her second or third choice (or no bid at all), it's her first experience with rejection, and off she goes crying.

As I understand it from GC, quota additions happen one of two ways - they are set either to favor the PNM or the smaller chapter - and I bet you nobody is going to tell you which method they use on any given campus.

I think counseling a PNM to list all possible chapters in hopes of being a quota addition to the one chapter she wants is very bad advice. Yes, I think she should accept that second or third choice chapter, but if she's not going to, listing them for some alternative magical outcome is just going to cause a lot of heartache, for herself, the chapter and the girl who WANTED that spot and didn't get it.

I don't know how it's handled but I would guess that the chapters keep them on the online roster at least to make their numbers look good because on some campuses, all the groups publish their rosters. If they're suddenly missing 10-12 girls whom they know to still be on campus, they might not want their numbers to not be competitive with those of other groups (who are probably doing the same thing). I've known fraternities to do that and also "accidentally" list the names of recent alums (but not note that they're alums now) online.