For a girl to receive a ZTA bid, she must have a recommendation. Your friends (especially if they joined this past fall) may not realize this. I am an alumna, and have been an advisor to several chapters(General Advisor, VPI advisor, Ritual advisor and numerous years as a Recruitment advisor) in various parts of the country and every girl who received a bid to ZTA had a recommendation-as others have said, it is a national requirement of ours. Additionally, as others have said, often PNMs do not realize that an alumna took the time to write a recommendation for them, and it may be an advisor in a back room doing it for a girl that has no rec. that the chapter is just in love with, but at FSU the majority of successful PNMs have recs.

Since you appear to feel comfortable with having no recs. for spring informal, I guess you did not have recs. for fall. Perhaps this is why fall recruitment did not work out the way you had hoped. I would think that someone who did not receive a bid would evaluate the plan she had for fall 2012 recruitment, and change those things that she has the power to change.

Like I said, I have never heard of any girl who is in a sorority having a rec. only until now did I know that maybe the girls that had them and didn't know. So it was my understanding that it was my grades that were the deciding factor. I am the first one in my family to go to college in America so I really had a limited understanding of how this all worked beyond the advice of my friends.

The thing about textual communication is that there is no tone to help the person receiving your message know exactly how you meant to convey your message. Without that additional information, you can unintentionally seem snippy unless you are very careful with your wording. It's the message received that counts.

It's ok. Just do the very best you can to maximize your options. We are here to help, just don't pooh-pooh the advice. :)

If they are "former" members, they can't write you a rec. Only members can do that. Please know that no matter how old you may be, unless your membership is terminated or you resign, you are a member until you die. So please, please do not call them "former" members. You are either a member or you are not. There is no other way. Just a little FYI since you aren't up to speed on GLOs. Those going thru recruitment are "potential new members." Those who have gone thru recruitment and accepted a bid are "new members." Once you are initiated, you are a "member." While in school you are a collegian. Once you leave school, you are an alumna.

End of tutorial.

I may not be an expert but yes I do know all that, after all I did go through recruitment and received a huge packet with all this info. Excuse my miswording.

Your understanding from whom? A lot of times that's what members will tell girls when they are embarrassed that their friend didn't get a bid to their chapter for another more personal reason. Trying to find out why you didn't get a bid from a house, especially when you know many members, is VERY uncomfortable for those members. You will never know why houses dropped you and you need to increase your odds now by doing everything in your power because there probably won't be that many spaces available and it will be even more competitive than formal was.

Since you say you suicided, then you obviously made it to preference round with at least two chapters left. That doesn't sound like what happens to a grade risk. I think you will need to have the openest of minds and not think that a little bump in your GPA is going to make you a hot PNM.

Let me be more clear: any person I have spoken to about my recruitment experience have been close friends. In no way have I ever made a fool of myself by begging members to reveal what went wrong. The grades thing was actually brought up to me by my Rho Gamma, with whom I have kept in touch with since recruitment. And yes by all means I am maximizing my options, but I only suicides because I truly felt I was not the right fit for that chapter, and throughout fall semester and meeting girls from there, have continued to feel this way. However, they are the only chapter I feel that way about, and FSU has 15 other chapters, so yes I understand its going to be competitive but I don't see why I shouldn't give it a shot.

Absolutely you should give it a shot! But heed our suggestions....we have no agenda toward and no vested interest in the PNMs who come here seeking advice. Hopefully you can find out quickly which sororities are going to be able to participate in spring recruitment and can round up a recommendation for each one, and hopefully you have friends in those sororities who can pull for you. As someone else stated, there will be only a few spots in a limited number of chapters during spring recruitment, so do all you can to set yourself apart (in a good way, of course!).

If things don't work out for you (for whatever reason) this spring and you decide to rush in the fall, you will need to secure new recommendations for all the sororities at FSU. You can ask the alumnae who had written previous ones. They will understand that you need new ones.

I just found out that the chapters won't know who is taking bids until the day of winterfest... So that puts me in an awkward position :\

They may be telling you that, and they may not be allowed to say right now per Panhellenic, but they have a pretty good idea if they have spots or not. There may be a couple of surprises of girls not returning once school resumes, but those that will be rushing in the spring know they are eligible to do so. I know it does not help your situation, but I wanted you to know how it really is.

I will qualify my statement by saying that that is based on total not being raised. if Panhellenic is going to raise total (the membership cap), and I have no idea that that is happening, it may allow a few more chapters to participate.

Something else that may factor into that, is that AOII is coming next fall, and I've heard that more chapters might be taking members to raise the overall chapter total (??) or something along those lines. On a side note, I think going through AOIIs colonization might be a good thing to consider for me as Ill be a sophomore this fall, what do you think FSUZeta?

Thank you for confirming that AOII will be colonizing in the fall. Many times the semester prior to a colonization, total is raised and it does allow more sororities to participate in informal recruitment. There will still be some sororities with more members than the new total, and they will still not be able to participate until formal recruitment in the fall, but it does open up more slots for PNMs.

Being a member of a colony is a rare honor and a wonderful opportunity for any PNM, but especially for sophomores, juniors and seniors, who often are overlooked during regular recruitment because they will not be an active collegiate member for 4 years. Joining a colony is not an easier route, but I would encourage anyone to consider giving it a shot.

Ok thank you so much! I've actually already emailed the women in charge and they told me they're going to start officially getting the word out in Spring, so that's definitely another exciting option for me :D

Recs sound pretty important. Would a pnm ask friends of hers who are currently in college or women who are already graduated? If she receives a bid for spring - is that obligation through the end of this school year or for one calendar year? If she receives a bid from a sorority she likes but might not be her first choice - should she go ahead and accept for the experience and then re-rush in the fall or just wait until fall. Is colonizing the opening of a new chapter on campus? Do experienced women from another school or alumna come in to get things going?