On my campus, there's no fee to go through recruitment, thus I guess they're looking at it as a chance to meet people? I don't know. As recruitment supervisor, I was annoyed that I had to deal with the hassle ;). Our campus no longer allows holdovers, as only one chapter on campus did that, and it was when we had recruitment in the fall, so it was to see what college grades the women posted. Now we've been moved to a deferred recruitment, so all (except like 3 transfers) had GPAs from this school before recruitment.

A lot of schools I can think of, even MOST don't have a GPA requirement to go through rush. I'm sure the school would say it's not their job to say who can go through rush. The fact that a girl without a 2.5 isn't going to get a bid from anywhere is absolutely beside the point. And that includes schools where the rush fees are expensive. Membership selection is private and therefore up to each chapter to decide if the girl gets a pass or not. Caveat emptor.

Slight tangent...I'm sorry, but I kinda really hate people who rush (go through recruitment) just to meet people and have no intention of joining a chapter. Sorority rush =/= fraternity rush. That really irritates me. Recruitment is not the source to meet people, not really. And more importantly, if you get invited back to round 2, round 3, whatever, and then just to decide to drop right before pref because you didn't actually want to join a sorority, I feel like you're taking a spot from someone who wanted to be there. /end mini rant

Is that possible? Quota isn't set until after pref, if I understand correctly, so the only way you could take a spot from someone else is if you went through pref and declined a bid.

You may reduce the chances of someone else receiving an invitation to the next round, under RFM where chapters can only invite back a limited pool of women, but you're not stealing a bid.

I guess that's picky, but it seems important to me. I can't imagine going through rush at all, much less just to meet people, so my personal bias is probably affecting how I interpret your sentiment.

Actually, fraternity rush doesn't even = fraternity rush any more since it's dry most places. And I'll make a sweeping generalization and say that at schools with no rush fee, there's very little chance of there not being enough bids to go around, even if there are a bunch of people rushing w no intention of pledging.

Well I'm sure that these women wanted to join a chapter, maybe they considered themselves to be special snowflakes who assumed they would get a bid regardless of their grades? It is also possible that they registered before first semester grades were posted.

I had a PNM with poor grades go through recruitment, and when I advised her that she may be cut heavily, she didn't believe me. "There's no way they really check grades on that many girls. They just say that to scare us."

She did pledge, but had very limited options.

Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear. I have heard of several girls going through recruitment, at my campus and some other places (where there is a rush fee), "to meet people". And I'm not saying they're stealing a bid, but I think that they could be taking an invitation to another round from someone else. If Suzy PNM is rushing just to meet people and gets invited back to ABC's round 3, whatever, and then drops out because she didn't actually want to join a chapter, Megan PNM who was the first girl on the round 3 invite list after the cutoff (if the cutoff is x number of girls and Megan is x+1), Megan PNM could've been at ABC's round 3 party if it weren't for Suzy PNM. Hypothetically.

That's how I see it. Unless I'm wrong?

And yes, very true about fraternity rush. My campus instituted a policy in the last few years that sorority women are no longer allowed at fraternity rush. I know other campuses have had that rule, but it was a difficult shift. But, I just meant that sorority recruitment is significantly more structured than fraternity rush and with fraternity rush you can just go around to houses and meet people and if you don't join, no harm, no foul. They can invite back as many guys as they want to their closed "rounds" and guys not joining a fraternity doesn't affect the other prospective members, like it can in recruitment.

Ad sigmagirl, ah, that makes sense, if they registered before grades were posted. I guess it's true that there are special snowflakes who just don't believe they'll get cut.

I don't think you're wrong, but I wonder if the girls just SAY they went through just to meet people and dropped out at the end. My guess is they didn't want to admit that they didn't get the invitations or the bid to the chapter/s they wanted and chose their excuse because it sounds less snotty.

I suppose that's true. And always a possibility. And better for them for at least having some tact instead of going, "oh I dropped out because I didn't want to join XYZ cause they're losers"

Well, I figured that I'd give everybody who commented on my thread a little update on how the rest of my informal recruitment experience went.

Whoever said that listening to tent talk is "the worst thing you can do" was absolutely right! I LOVED XYZ! As soon as I walked in the door, I was greeted with nothing but smiles. One of the sisters took me into a room to show me their poster boards and I was also given a tour of the house, which is something that the other houses didn't do. I also really liked the fact that they showed us videos of their philanthropy work and they even showed us a slideshow of what their sisterhood meant to them, which was very touching. After spending the evening with these girls, I couldn't imagine where the nasty rumors came from.

I went back to XYZ's house the next day and I got to have some pretty deep conversations with a few of the sisters. I feel like those conversations went very well and I think I made myself stand out to those sisters. It felt as if I was talking to a friend as opposed to a stranger. It's a shame that I couldn't get their numbers because I would still like to keep in contact with them and hang out with them outside of the sorority.

That being said, I didn't get a bid. :( I'm a little bummed, but I wasn't surprised. Like I said before, there weren't many bids to go around and plenty of wonderful girls rushing. I'm happy for those who did get in though. They deserved it. All I can really do is keep my head up and work on improving so I'll be prepared for formal recruitment in the fall. I think one of the problems was that even though I had nice conversations with the sisters I did talk to, I didn't talk to enough sisters to make an impression on the group as a whole. I talked to maybe 10 in the two days that I went there, which isn't much considering the sorority has 100+ girls in it. I believe that it just wasn't the right time for me since I already have enough stress in my life with trying to work on raising my GPA. The best that I can do is just work on improving myself and hopefully, talk to more sisters during formal recruitment. I'm already very excited for it and I can't wait for fall! :)

You sound like you have a great attitude. But don't worry about the number of girls you talked to - during formal rush you will speak to approximately 10 girls through the whole process. But you seeing through the tent talk will really help you come fall. While you may have your heart set on a particular couple chapters, you are now wise enough to give every one of them a shot.

Grades up, social presence up, physical presence up, positive attitude up! And good luck to you. :)

Msm, that is a bummer you didn't get a bid, but informal recruitment can be tougher as there are fewer slots to go around. You have an awesome attitude and I'm glad you had a positive experience overall. I hope formal recruitment goes well for you. Best of luck and I hope you'll keep us posted.