Bid List
 

Belle,
As far as I recall Panhellenic has never released a bid list at SC.

Football Fan,
Although the huge drop in numbers is shocking, I could buy that. Just from what I know about Panhellenic recruitment, what I'm really confused if all the numbers are correct that Tri Delt would have 50 and ADPi 64. Without getting too much into "tiers", neither is a chapter that struggles getting quota, and neither has been much larger than the other in the past 6-7 years. So the reason I'm curious about other numbers is to see what exactly went down this year.

Also worth mentioning that I know in 2007 that at least four chapters had 69 PNMs, but I have no idea what quota was. That year most chapters were within 3-4 PNMs of each other. This year it's 14? Just really, really abnormal.

Could ADPi's nationals have made a mistake and they really had 54? Still doesn't explain the unofficial 68 number I got for Gamma Phi but makes a little bit more sense...

I'm going to take a wild guess that quota was set at the low range (to enable the most chapters to reach quota), then a few chapters received a lot of quota additions just due to the number of women ranking them on their bid cards. Now that there isn't a cap on the number of quota additions a chapter can receive, college panhellenics have no reason to NOT place every woman who maximizes her options. This isn't the first campus where we've seen this this year (I think it was Auburn and Alabama that had a lot of variation in pledge class sizes?).

DG pledged 60, but I don't know the official quota.

I'm going to say something that I'm sure some of you won't like, but what is the point of setting quota so low? Yes, chapters can go back to their (inter)nationals and say they achieved quota, but with such size disparities in the pledge classes it almost negates the entire purpose of quota in the first place! :(

The point is that it is set at whatever number allows the most PNMs to be placed thru quota and quota additions. I know that may seem odd. However, RFM is totally charged with placing most PNMs in their highest preference. If a higher quota was used, some may not be placed that way. And since RFM guarantees a bid to all who maximize their options and tries to give them their highest option, they have to set it wherever that happens.

I explained in another thread how the lower quota actually HELPS the smaller chapters, as well as placing the most PNM's.

Because they traditionally have lower return rates to their parties, they are allowed to invite more women to their parties, including prefs, than the more "popular" chapters who have higher return rates. This is meant to assure that they meet quota, but often times, this number is either overshot or leads to a situation where they also have a list filled with PNMs who only have them left as an option. When it comes to bid matching, quota additions are added to place as many women as possible. If you have a longer bid list than another chapter with a situation such as I described, you end up with a very large class. The chapters with higher return rates are usually running on a razor sharp margin and competing against the other highly competitive groups for the same girls. It makes it more difficult to go way over total when RFM is done correctly.

I guess what I mean is that wasn't the original purpose of quota to make sure chapters stayed all close to the same size? I.e., that certain chapters didn't keep getting bigger? Maybe the answer is that the previous rationale is no longer the purpose of quota and that is fine.

I suppose one way to compensate is to have a higher total and allow the chapters taking near quota to get to the average chapter size through COB... Or, we all agree that chapters being the same size doesn't signify chapter strength!

P.S. DeltaBetaBaby -- I am going to check that out, but off to work now. Being a finance/accounting person, I LOVE numerical examples :)

Just saw this :) will send out an email to see what I can learn. Not going to get to it until later in the week, have ongoing stuff ongoing. And going. And going.

Quota was originally intended to help keep chapters close to the same size. And to set a time and place for recruitment so that people weren't running around snagging women from other groups during the year. (similar to how football was back before they had recruiting rules when people would go to another campus and literally grab a top player and convince him to come to the other school..and took him right then!)

Eventually it came to be seen that struggling chapters would just simply end up with fewer pledges and there would be large numbers left out when bid matching was done. Enter Quota Additions as at least a partial solution. But it was limited to 5% of quota so that still women were being left out at the end.

So now we have RFM which at least can find a place for all of them if there are no suicides who don't match. No limits on the number of QAs. Quota set where the most women are placed instead of being predicated on the number of women signing bid cards divided by the number of chapters.

Is it perfect? No, but it beats any system we've had before. And I'm sure as time goes on, NPC will continue to refine it and look for even better ways.

I know everybody hates tiers here, and I'm not going to talk specifically about chapter reps, but unless tiers have changed drastically in the last two years, and unless tiers have no impact on return rates, DG with 60, Tri-Delt with 50, ADPi with 64 and Gamma Phi with 68 doesn't make a ton of sense if it was all based on return rates.

1) GA's have a lot of leeway in placing QA's, and to some degree, they should take parity into mind. So, QA's may have gone to GHI and XYZ, even if they had listed those chapters behind ABC and DEF on their bid cards.

2) If a chapter has historically done very well, they get few invites for pref. Let's say that quota is estimated at 50, and for the last three years, every girl attending prefs at ABC put them first on their bid card. ABC may only get to invite just over 50 girls to pref. This is one of the big changes that RFM made: looking at how chapters were ultimately ranked on bid cards to help determine pref invites. ABC just barely taking quota doesn't mean that they didn't recruit as well as other chapters, it could just mean that they didn't recruit as well as in previous years.

Couldn't that mean that ABC did extremely well at recruiting over the past few years, and that they only got to invite (let's say) 55 women for prefs? Even if all 55 of those women put them first and are matched/quota added to their chapter, they still won't end up with more than 55 from quota additions because they aren't on anyone else's bid card, because they were only allowed to invite back those 55 for prefs. Other chapters who were permitted more pref invites because their return rates weren't quite as high might end up with more QAs because there is a bigger pool of women who attended their pref party and then ranked them on their bid cards, and therefore those chapters would have larger pledge classes overall.

Crazy run-on sentences, but I can't figure out a way to phrase it better. Best return rates -> limited # of pref invites -> limited opportunity for quota additions -> smaller (but still quota or quota +) pledge class?


ETA: Which could also explain why quota seems to be low. If they are limiting pref invites for the chapters with the best return rates, Panhellenic/the RFM software must be 'forecasting' quota to some degree. If ABC is only permitted to invite 55 women for prefs, with the expectation that quota will be around 50, and then it turns out that more women sign bid cards than they anticipated (say no one drops out after prefs), they would be penalizing ABC by making quota 60, since ABC was only permitted to invite back 55 women for prefs. ABC will automatically not be able to make quota, even though their # of prefs invites was limited in the first place because their return rates were so strong.

Exactly, SKS. The groups who have the best return rates get to invite fewer women back to each round. That requires that they release women they would have carried to the bitter end in the past, allowing those women to be more realistic in their expectations. Keep in mind though that groups can list women on their bid lists who did not attend their prefs...and a woman could put a group whose pref she did not attend on her bid card.

You have to get the idea that numbers = popularity of the house out of your head. It no longer means anything. Getting a big class may be due to having large numbers returning each day due to traditionally being a weak recruiting chapter, it may mean that you are this year's IT chapter and every girl that you issued an invitation to decided to come back to you but cut the other big chapter. Strong chapters have been known to not make quota because they miscalculated and only invited back girls that were interested in their biggest competitor. RFM can be very tricky. Quota additions can go to strong and weak chapters. Trying to read too much into it will make you crazy.

OK, let's take two chapters. Total at this school is 200.

ABC is super popular, has 99% retention and never has a problem making quota. They are over total now, with 225 members.

XYZ is the opposite - bad party retention and don't make quota often. They only have 150 members.

Quota that before, might have been 40 is set at 20. ABC takes it, they now have 245 members. They're done, they can't take any more. XYZ takes it and also can bid up to chapter total. They now have 200 members.

Whereas before XYZ was 75 members behind ABC, they are now only 45 members behind. If quota keeps being set in this manner, eventually XYZ will be able to catch up. When quotas are huge (like when they used to be set after the first day) that's next to impossible.

Quota additions are another whole deal. They are to help the PNMs, not the sororities.

The big problem is the transition between the old and new systems. When sororities have to make WAY bigger cuts after the first round than they ever did before, it really freaks out the rushees who then quit because they no longer have the "good" houses left. It seems to take a few years and girls figure out that it's a lot more competitive than it used to be, and start to accept chapters they wouldn't have before, and then the rising tide in fact raises all ships. But not right away. And of course, it's not really more competitive. It's just more competitive earlier so it feels like more of a blow. Back in my day it was pretty unusual to not have a full schedule all or most of the way through. Now I think it's the other way around.

But it does seem to me that there is a certain amount of forecasting of quota that happens, and maybe someone can address that. If chapter A is really strong and has to make big cuts after each round, I'm confused about how that is determined. Let me give a scenario and maybe someone can jump in.

Chapter A has 90% return rates after each round. There are 1000 girls going through recruitment. Let's say parties go from 12 to 9 to 5 to 3. How is it determined what percentage of girls they have to cut? I mean it seems there has to be a presumption of a final quota for them to work for. So if the quota at the end is forecasted to be 50, they'd want 150 at pref (a pledge class at each party is what I was always told), 250 the 3rd round, and 450 at round two, with a buffer of 10% for the girls who will cut them. That would answer the whopper cut after round one and a steady drop from there. But is this anywhere near what really happens? And how would they forecast the final number? Or is that based on return rates as well? 1000 girls go through rush. Historically 70% get placed, or 700 girls. Divided by 12 chapters, that puts a forecasted quota at 58. That would allow for a fairly sizeable discrepancy when it came to real life. Maybe this year the girls figure it out and DON'T drop out after round one, or the chapters are all fighting over the same small pool of girls and too many girls get inadvertently cut completely. But in general this seems to make sense to me. Am I right or completely off target?

The chapters who have higher return rates usually don't get 3x quota for prefs.

I kind of understand what DS is saying though - it seems like RFM and changes in QAs all came at the same time. They should have worked the kinks out of one before moving on and changing the other.

That's correct, Dubai Sis. There is a presumption made when the campus goes on RFM. And actually before RFM, there was a methodology for that but it's tighter now. So, once a campus has a history under RFM, that percentage will be used the following year, with adjustments year to year based upon the chapter's return rates each year. So it's fluid in that it can go up or down each year depending on a chapter's performance the previous year.

And AOIIAngel, at one time that was the general formula..depending on how many prefs you had. The basic assumption was that with 2 prefs you had to have 2.5 times quota (which had already been set earlier in rush) in order to have quota at the end. Obviously, that only worked on campuses where there was parity. With RFM, that assumption is gone and it is based on chapter performance averages.

It was my assumption, and I could totally be wrong, that quota forecasting was being done throughout recruitment, and tweaked each day depending on overall PNM retention. I can only speak for my limited experience, but it seems that a strong Greek Advisor and/or RFM specialist will be able to make decent predictions (within a range) of how many PNMs who start the process will be placed on Bid Day.

I've never had the Greek Advisor give me the return targets for each round of recruitment ahead of time - usually I get the figure during that day's parties, depending on drop rates.

Yes, they start out with a range assumption based on the number of PNMs at that point. It will adjust as the week goes on. And you should be given the number you can invite back each day - not all days at the beginning. The number may need a little tweaking based on your return numbers each day. So if one day was waaaaay off, they would adjust for that for the following day.

Make sense?

My super-great pnm pledged Kappa!

A big change with RFM is that they also take into account the % of women who list a chapter first on their bid cards.

So, old system at a school with 2 prefs: If quota is forecasted to be 50, invite numbers would be set so that every chapter would get 100 girls at prefs. 50% return rate? You get to invite 200 girls. 75% return rate? You get to invite 133 girls.

However, you can see that this is predicated on the assumption that all the chapters suddenly equalize and half the PNM's at each chapter pick it. That is obviously NOT the case. If ABC is so awesome that every PNM will list them first, they don't need 100 girls, they only need 50. Letting them have 100 can be disastrous for the weaker chapters.


Another change with RFM is better forecasting. Previously, they used a 3-year or 5-year moving average to calculate return rates. So let's say ABC had 50% in 2009, 60% in 2010, and 70% in 2011. Their forecasting return rate would be 60% in 2012. Well, anyone paying attention would say that is a low assumption, because they are clearly doing better, and it makes sense to assume they'd have at least 70% in 2012. These types of things are now taken into consideration.

I read more than I post, but I just wanted to chime in here to clear up a few questions/misconceptions about RFM, changes to QAs, etc.

The first campus started using RFM in 2003 and each year small improvements are made by the leadership team. We are in good hands.

Someone asked about the averages - they are weighted averages and most recent performance is the most critical. Someone mentioned the numbers are watched closely each day so that adjustments can be made. However, if a chapter under performs at a preference event they may not have enough women attend to made quota. It happens from time to time to even the strongest recruiting chapters.

The change remove the 5% cap for QAs was removed in 2008. This change has allow the specialists to do what is best for each situation without having their hands tied. There have been a few campuses over the years where the QAs have been distributed in an unusual manner but this is the exception rather than the rule. The overall goal is to grow the community.

There are very few campuses where a chapter are still listing women who did not attend their preference event on their bid list. Where this situation exists the Delegates and NPC AA are working to fix this issue as it is counterproductive to the process and often leads to other issues.

The 2011 MRABA clearly states that a PNM may only list on her MRABA chapters whose preference event she attended. We actually have them initial this section as well as sign.

All in all the statics are amazing to see the numbers of chapters making quota and the % of PNMs matched. Many NPC groups are working on retention as that is the other critical piece to the puzzle!

Right. This is what I was saying. In the past you wanted about 3x quota at prefs. They don't necessarily let the higher power chapters get that many at prefs anymore...as explained well by DBB below.
BTW, I think we're saying the same thing.

Would those campuses most likely be the ones where pref = the first invite only event and RFM has been employed perhaps too zealously?

It's on the form, but is it actually in the Green Book? Again - what happens at campuses where there was no cutting before pref?

I know you know where I'm coming from on this. :)

Yes, I do know where you are coming from! I should have clarified that I was talking about schools that have fully or partially structured recruitment. There are very few of those schools where chapters list women who did not attend their preference event on their bid list. I can think of one who just corrected the situation on the chapter and PNM side last year, thankfully!

For schools that use minimally structured or continuous recruitment they still use the MRABA script and those women sign the COB acceptance binding agreement.

Yes, the info is in the MOI again in the "What Every Potential New Member Needs to Know About Recruitment" section in the recruitment handbook. The info is also on the script and on the form. Hopefully covering all bases!

The school you are thinking about isn't using RFM and we are still working on figuring out the best format. Always a work in progress, onward and upward!

This took me forever to find considering it was in this actual thread! Sad. Now that I have read it through, DBB, can you please explain the second scenario? Maybe I'm tired, but I am not understanding that one. Are there five women who list A and then B second and another set of five women who only attend pref at A and therefore are not listing B at all?

Yes, that is what I mean. I am trying to think of a situation where a higher quota helps a small chapter, and I can't come up with one at all.

I think it is hard to make a simple model of the bid matching process with all the unknown pieces. My problem with the "artificially" low quotas is the quota additions. At all the schools I've been involved with (granted, only three) the QAs are based on PNM preference, not helping the smaller chapters.

I tried to make a model with A and B, but I think the quota additions don't model correctly with only two chapters. Instead, if you think of a cluster of stronger-recruiting chapters and a cluster of weaker-recruiting chapters, then the problem becomes more clear. There will be women who get to pref that only preffed at two or three of the stronger-recruiting chapters. EVEN IF the campus uses the idea that QAs go to the smaller chapter, that would be the smaller of the strong cluster.

Then what happens is some of the stronger-recruiting chapters end up with quota +15, which still leaves the smaller chapters behind, even if they technically made quota.

If, as Titchou said, quota is now about matching as many women as possible to as many chapters as possible, then I can accept that we are saying it is no longer a tool to try to keep chapters at relatively the same sizes. Then, however, we should no longer judge our chapters on whether or not they made quota.

Right, there was a long thread on QA's a while back, and I got attacked for the opinion that we should just let women go bidless if they pref two (three, on some campuses) strong recruiting chapters and aren't high enough on anybody's list. As long as someone missed quota, there would be opportunities for COB.

I think you hit it right on the head. Chapters tend to compete in clusters for more or less the very same girls. I do think the idea is achieving overall relative parity- not ten chapters all of equal size or necessarily equal recruiting strength. Still, when a chapter hits quota or quota plus they should be at or over chapter total, so that most chapters, and certainly not half or the majority of chapters meeting quota are having to COR all year all long to fill spots.

The other question I have is how does RFM account for or compensate for a situation where a chapter starts competing in a different cluster? That seems to me the most likely unknown variable that causes a chapter to be off quota. Or maybe RFM doesn't address that variable?

Well that's what keeps us all on our toes, right? Suddenly this sleeper is competing with the big girls and throws everything into chaos. I'd definitely rather have it that way than the 75 year, fixed in stone tiers that no one can break.

"I think it is hard to make a simple model of the bid matching process with all the unknown pieces. My problem with the "artificially" low quotas is the quota additions. At all the schools I've been involved with (granted, only three) the QAs are based on PNM preference, not helping the smaller chapters."

The PNM should be matched to the smallest chapter on their bid card. So if they can put 2 choices down and they don't match to either by quota, then they are a QA to the smallest of the two...which may be their first choice...or may be their second. It doesn't matter. All that matters is that as a QA you go to the smallest chapter.

Alpha Phi - 70

(Please bear with me, the caffeine isn't fully kicked in)

While that sounds good, I think I can understand why some systems would do it the other way. If QA = going to the smaller of your chapters, some women will probably automatically not put all chapters down on their bid card because they don't want to go to that chapter. And if your non-fave teeny chapter has asked you back all through rush, you have to put them down or not get a QA at all.

The MOI says otherwise.

Not exactly. I have PDF version so I can't copy and paste but it says the Greek Adviser should try to add them equally across the board. So we do to the smallest chapter in most cases.

And really, the way it falls out on my current campus, they are going to the smaller chapter anyway....