AlphaGamUGAAlum, the University of Kansas Greek Life / Panhellenic site says that they "guarantee":

http://www.kugreek.org/panhellenic_qa.html#18

Will I automatically get into a chapter by the end of the week?
KU has a very low occurrence of women who are not matched to a chapter for one reason or another. The average percentage of women who didn’t match over the last three years is about 4%. While we can’t guarantee that you’ll match to a chapter for the whole week, if you participate in the Preference round (the last round of recruitment) and you maximize your options when you rank the chapters you visited that night, and we will guarantee that you will become a member of one of those chapters.

Note that the PNM has to make it to Preference and has to maximize her options when she ranks after Pref.

I'm not sure if you are asking me, specifically, but at Cal they only go to two parties for pref.

If a PNM has maximized her options all along and only gets invited to one pref party, then my understanding is she is not guaranteed a bid. She must have a full party schedule for prefs and have maximized her options throughout the process to have a guaranteed bid. Someone please correct me, if I am wrong!

I was asking about everyplace. Thanks for answering.

It looks like there are a few campuses that flat our guarantee. And there are others at which a girl who got the maximum number of invites to prefs are eligible (which seems odd to me since it's beyond their control) like Alabama and Cal, and others where they will match some and not others, like Auburn and Georgia where quota additions exist but everyone who maximizes doesn't get one.

It's interesting that there's that much variety.

I suspect I wasn't alone in my belief that quota additions were a reward for every girl who maximized her options, and I was interested in what campuses really do.

Tufts has guaranteed placement. If a pnm is dropped at any point from all three groups, she is invited back to her two favorites. If she is dropped by one group first and the other two later on, she goes to the two she later returned to. If she doesn't match up after pref, she is matched to her favorite. I have seen exceptions, such as one pnm who was so rude to one group that the GA didn't apply this rule to her. But it causes a ton of headaches, and I know at least two groups that have definitely been left with women that were poor fits for their chapters on bid day.

At some point you have to ask what's more important -- making every PNM happy or strengthening the overall sisterhood. Forcing groups to take PNMs they never really wanted isn't the solution!

Speaking as a non-Greek, I fully understand and sympathize with girls who either get bids to houses they're not happy with or, as in my case, don't get bids at all. But by definition sorority membership is exclusive, so we have to expect that not everyone "gets in". Would I have benefited from a system like Tufts'? Of course...but who wants to belong to a group where you know the only reason you're there is because the other members were forced to admit you? No thanks!

Please keep in mind that that's not really the kind of guaranteed placement that most people are talking about.

At most, I think, most people mean that a girl who lists all the groups she preffed on her bid card, not that she gets to choose and the groups have no say.

Groups are usually very interested in the girls that they pref. A young woman can't force her way there at most campuses.

How much difference do you think quota additions make in the 99% number at your campus?

(Depending on who she is preffing, a girl might have a 100% chance of getting one of her three if she lists them all and one group that she lists typically doesn't make quota.)

I find all this stuff really interesting. I really thought quota additions were wonderful, but since I realized that they didn't necessarily benefit all girls who maximized, I'm starting to wonder if using release figures and allowing groups to snap bid to chapter total right after regular bid matching wouldn't work just as well.

Other than the QAs not knowing that they were QAs in a way that snap bids know they were further down the list, what are the other benefits of QAs over snap bids if you were using release figures in both methods?

This guaranteed bid matching is an interesting concept. I don't believe it was ever used at my alma mater, because I always remember some ladies not receiving bids... I will have to ask if they are using this format now. I would imagine the numbers would go up dramatically.

Well, even if they are matching all the girls who maximize their options, there are likely to be folks who ISP or otherwise don't maximize and don't receive bids.

So even with guaranteed matching, there'd be some girls without bids.

Ah, I see... Interesting. I will have to look into this. :)

Did these women know that they were released, or did they show up at bid day thinking that their group wanted them all along?

I'm actually not too sure. I don't know too much about the system at Tufts. It's all totally screwed up though besides this. They've had no GA for a year now, and I think it's making things worse.

GUARANTEED BID AT ALABAMA