I was waiting on you yo show up and say this! I love this quote.

Yes, this. I also believe that how difficult it is to be accepted into the university plays a part. It is more difficult to stand out at schools where everyone has a high gPa and a list of leadership experience a mile long.

I do not believe it was any more mutually selective at my daughter's school. And with recruitment being just three rounds (4 parties, Max 3, then two for pref) It was a pretty fast paced and the first round cuts were deep by two sororities. And you also ranked 1-4 from day one. As an outsider I think that makes girls focus on their "top" choice their first day. I would like it to be ranking 1,1,1 and 2 on day one and 1,1 and 2 on day two. But I'm not a RFM expert - but I suspect there is a reason why they rank 1-4 beginning on day one - and I bet that helps refine list size even more. Most of the people my daughter talked with did not have 3 parties the second round. Most had two. So right there that kills the myth of mutual selection - if you don't have a full party list.

And at SEC schools I don't think you can say that there are sororities that 'exist to take girls who are cut from other sororities.' They exist for their sisterhood. It is determined that whatever greek system it is- can support X number of sororities based on the number of girls going through recruitment. Girls need to be open to all options and not just focus on the "popular" ones. And part of this is all greek woman need to support all chapters. It's fine to compete at greek week and other competitions - but in general campus life you should NEVER utter a negative comment about another GLO.

^^^^^THIS^^^^^

My daughter's grades/academic performance/extra curricular activities would have been honors program and a recruitment positive were I pledged and graduated. If you look that the "Green, Yellow, Red" zones that some of the SEC schools put out - she is way, way green.

At her school - she is "below average" in terms of HS GPA.

@BlueBayou, I'm not saying that a girl can't have a sisterhood in a sorority. I think sisterhood is where you look for it. In fact, I think you can often have a better chance at finding it at a place that is more welcoming for who you are as a whole person. But, the reality is that if you were to eliminate 2 or 3 sororities from some of these SEC campuses, you would literally have hundreds of girls who would be released or you would have ginormous pledge classes. At one time, it was the former. So, yes, the reality is that there are sororities that were added to give every girl a better chance for sisterhood. It's a good thing, but the reality is also there that there are sororities who do have the girls who didn't have the recs, the connections, the tippy-top grades, etc to get into some sororities. If you look on Alabama's recruitment page, it lists the GPAs required for each chapter. If you have a 3.2 GPA, you are not getting a bid to seven of the 19 chapters and the statistics say that you will most likely only be invited back to 2 or 3 second-round parties.

I assure you, none of our sorority chapters exist to do this. You really need to put the brakes on with the misinformation before it affects your daughter's point of view. That kind of attitude would be harmful at a "less competitive" school and disastrous at a competitive SEC school.

NO, that is not how RFM works. RFM is entirely based on the number of PNMs.

You are not Greek. Your child is not yet Greek. You have no internal knowledge of our organizations and chapters. The opinions you are posting here are incorrect and could have grave consequences for your daughter. Plus, you're insulting us and all of our Panhellenic sisters.

Re smaller schools and the one or two more popular chapters- this is why I had a herd of cows when my alma mater had the VERY dumb idea of allowing first semester freshmen to participate in informal (or I guess what is called now “minimally structured”) rush. The only exposure they got to each sorority was 5 minutes at a table in a gym - other than that they weren’t compelled to go to any events and there was no coordinated schedule. The outcome was exactly what you’d expect - the one or two most popular groups had the most people attending events and since there of course was no quota, they only bid up to total (which they were already closest to to begin with).

Naturally a lot of girls who wanted these most popular sororities were disappointed, and most of them didn’t look at other groups or try again - they said “XYZ didn’t bid me so Greek life is full of stuck up jerks.”

Now my school has a very small Greek system population wise, but obviously this was not “more mutually selective.”

But to the subject of the thread - I think the “competitive” aspect of SEC etc rush is just getting in the door in the first place. A high GPA and recs are practically mandatory to get past the first round.

Also, the number crunching needs to include how many women accept bids on bid day vs how many women actually initiate. When you hear 1000 women received bids but only see 900 women getting initiated, it’s usually because they went to bid day at Icky Iota and Bad Fit Beta, tried it for a week, and then quit. That sort of thing seems more likely to happen at the schools deemed competitive.

I agree with this. That if the initiation rate is disproportionate among chapters - that is impacting the outcomes and greek system health beyond the actual "formal recruitment" process.