Correlation is not causation.

Despite a lot of extension, Cincy still has high numbers, but I am not familiar enough with the university or its Greek Life to know if that is a good read of the situation.

Next vote is for any campus where AOPi already has a chapter.
; -)

Sonoma State (again)
Nevada - Reno
Wake Forest

This is like saying "the tire is flat so I'm going repair that hole in the roof of the house." If there are chapters so large that they need a semester for everyone to get acquainted, then stop this ridiculous one size fits all jazz and let them have a semester long pledge program.

No. When LSU opened, the ONLY group to submit an interest packet and present was Alpha Phi.

Right, it's all about the atmosphere at the school. At smaller schools without houses, it's near impossible to get a big group together and build bonds. At schools like Yale, on the list above, I think a CHAPTER of around 60-80 is optimal. A big part of the interest in NPCs at these schools is connecting with upperclassmen, and there's not much connection with upperclassmen if you're struggling to learn 50-60 names in your pledge class.

I deal with demographics data a good bit in my job, and I hope that our GLOs and the educational institutions do some interest/membership potential projections when making expansions decisions. For example, looking at the number of females ages 9-14 and their income & ethnicity characteristics to estimate what the demand may be in the near future.

My grad school advisor did demographic analysis for the admissions office and for the State Department of Education, looking at future demand, for use in planning for campus expansions. For those of you that have experience with greek life departments, have you seen this type data used?

Like LDF said, it's different at every school. Go by the law of diminishing returns, i.e. the sizes have gotten so uncomfy for that school that it deters women from joining. Dartmouth was wanting more sororities and complaining about size when the chapters got to like 110 members. At Arkansas, the chapters had to get to like 350 before they were at that point. Just saying "xxx is too big of a class" is arbitrary. Also, how many from that class are still there senior year? Once again it seems the focus is on quota and total during rush and retention gets swept under the rug. Kind of like the girls who spend months planning for the wedding but can't be bothered to spend 2.5 seconds figuring out a household budget or discussing what religion the kids will be...the things of the actual marriage.

True, BUT member retention through 4 years might improve if they don't feel that their usefulness has passed them by. If all of the leadership in the chapter is handled by a small portion of the sophomores and juniors, you can't possibly live in the house, and you are completely over the fraternity party scene, what reason is there to keep paying dues and attending chapter meetings that are bigger than freshman lecture classes? If that 350 member chapter goes to 250 that is still a freakishly big group, but some of the above could be diminished, at least for a few girls.

There are some schools where it seems member retention must be terrible. I notice huge pledge classes, but quite large spring rush numbers as well. The only way that can happen is if they are losing well more than the odd disgruntled member who bails, or the odd member who transfers to a different school or simply drops out of college. Now, part of that is special snowflake inability to keep to a commitment, but that can't explain all of it.

I think part of the issue at Arkansas was the sudden increase in interest. The chapters had been a healthy size, but not huge, for 15 years and then BAM all of the sudden they were dealing with massive quotas. The chapters hated that from the start but it was a slow process to open for extension due to concerns about housing and the administration's slowness to accept the issue as a real need. By the time they finally opened, the chapters were at ridiculous sizes.

At Arizona State they already have several stacked but nothing is moving due to ASU's problematic housing....so bad that the house corp officers of all 12 groups are now working with a developer for their own high rise.

I know of at least one campus on the list that is expanding and has the group picked out already...maybe sometimes it happens without publicity? I'm not sure how that works.

Sometimes groups don't publicize where they are presenting, but I haven't heard of anyone keeping it under wraps once they are selected. They usually want all the publicity they can get at that point!

And the new building at ASU is currently designed for 14 groups and they have 12 on campus now.

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