Yes, absolutely.

Woot! :D

Hey now, Indiana does the bolded part! (nothing like sitting through a two hour recruitment adviser training session on bid matching only to have the person running say- oh- none of this really applies to you).

Well, just about everybody does it electronically now. there are exceptions.

Oh ForeverRoses, I know. But to try to get into how IU follows all the rules EXCEPT they all set their own quota, and some will take quota additions and some won't, so there are lots and lots of girls who go unmatched no matter how well their rush goes is just a whole lotta mouthful unless she is actually asking about IU specifically. And as far as I know, Nebraska has the same rules but it never seems to be a problem and one school requires all girls who go through rush get placed. And then there are the schools that are still totally last century who aren't following RFM (although they are apparently very few) and a few who haven't bought the software because they have so few girls going through rush. But the vast majority work in the way explained above.

We love our special snowflakes who keep it interesting, on both sides of the door!

I'm still slightly confused, but thank you for everyone trying to clear this up!
P.S. I love the names we've made up for the PNM's. :)

the utterly short version is you don't have to worry about it. The houses make their lists, you make your list, it goes into a machine and pledge classes pop out.

Did you have another specific question about the process? This is actually the one time of the week that it's easy for us to talk about because everyone's rules are the same and not secret.

Slight lane swerve, it has been mentioned about "if a PNM attends every party to which she is invited...", my school didn't/doesn't allow PNMs to not go to parties just because they don't want to. The only reason to miss a party is for a documented schedule conflict discussed with the Pi Chis. Arbitrarily skipping a party is grounds for being released. Are there schools where this is not the case?

In regards to the original question, we used to scrub the glitter out of every orifice, and vacuumed the first layer of glitter out of the carpeting. Then came the pillow fight.

It really isn't anything you need to worry about. Maybe you should concentrate on studying and raising your very low GPA instead of worrying about things that are completely out of your control? I just am starting to feel like you're looking for a way to try to game the system. Which you can't.

I was just curious to know how it works, that's all. No need to accuse me of trying to cheat the system.

GLITTER: The Herpes of crafting.

Yes...many. NPC uses the term "may release" which allows schools to make their own decisions about whether they will release such women from recruitment.

THANK YOU Titchou and DBB for helping me out here.

Ooopsies! My bad. I know better than to step into the quicksand that is RFM (at least to me it is akin to Calculus and I'm not ever going there).


Whew. Got it. I forever swear off any commenting on this entire business. For the duration I shall be resting on a chaise, sipping a beverage while being fanned by gorgeous men with 8 packs. Peel me a grape.

ETA: OP, Old_Row is not accusing you of anything; she is making a recommendation that you would be wise to consider seriously. Old_Row is not That Kind Of Girl.

So, out of curiosity how do QAs work?

In short, it appears as though it depends on the school. In theory, women are supposed to be filled in to chapters that haven't reached Total, but at many schools, they are placed with their first choice. (I think this is kind of a slap in the face to women who matched with their second choice. They don't get to go to their first choice because they aren't rejected by everyone?) Oh well, the QAs and the people that go to their second choices never know who the QAs are anyway.

Its not necessarily their first choice. At some schools a QA goes to whichever chapter is smaller. It can also be to spread out the QAs so that one chapter does not get too many.

So... if we get to the end of matching and girl A isn't matched, and she wrote down ABC and XYZ, does a ABC or XYZ offer to take her and thus she becomes a quota addition? I guess what I was curious about is how it is determined which chapter girl A goes to, and how she becomes a QA as opposed to someone who is matched during matching.

The RFM specialist assigned to that campus pretty much makes the call. The basic idea is that they are all placed according to their first choice if at all possible - unless it totally skews the system. Without having a whole scenario it's hard to say where girl A would go. She matches to her first choice automatically if they have her high enough on their list and have open spots in quota. If they fill quota before they get to her, she could be matched to them if everyone else is way over quota. The RFM specialist tries to even it all out basically.

At my campus - if ABC and XYZ both already made quota - she would go to whichever of the two was smaller if they both had her on their list.
If one had decided after prefs they didnt want her - and she wasnt on their list, she would go to the other.
If both were the same size - she would go to her top choice, unless that meant one group was getting way too many QAs. Then she might go to whichever chapter had her higher on their 2nd list.

You dont want one chapter to be getting too many QAs - the unicorns run out of rainbows

Okay, thanks for the info! I was really just curious

<snarkmode>
All the PNMs' pref cards are taped to a cork board. Each chapter advisor is given a number of darts equivalent to quota. The advisors form a queue. Each advisor tosses a dart at the board. If it hits a pref card listing the advisor's chapter, the PNM is matched to that chapter, the dart is removed from the advisor's allotment, and the card is taken down. If the dart hits a pref card that does not list the advisor's chapter, she retrieves the dart and goes to the end of the line. When a chapter meets quota, its advisor steps out of line. Bid matching ends when all the cards left on the cork board list only chapters that have made quota, and, well, those remaining PNMs are SOL unless a chapter that didn't meet quota wants to issue a snap bid.
</snarkmode>

Bahahah, that is a fantastic mental image

And the advent of computer bid matching just took all the fun out of it!

Well it also took out some of the late nights too. With every forward step we leave something behind.

Those of y'all who were involved in Bid Matching by hand know that there is no public satisfaction as wonderful as saying, "Match - and QUOTA!"

The new advisors always stood out because of their poor aim.

^^^
http://i.imgur.com/rN8o2.gif

Ya'll were having WAY too much fun.:p

There really isn't, a computer printout just isn't the same as Hand Matching. Yes, much MUCH faster, efficient and accurate (well, as long as the computers work properly!) but I'll never forget the joys of "Match" and "Quota"!

Not if it was another group that yelled it and we hadn't even gone all the way thru the cards yet.

I really love reading the NPC bid matching scenario threads. I'm not even lane swerving, just standing across the street watching with extreme interest from my front yard.

Question: it was mentioned that when PNMs are invited back to all rounds including Pref, it's an unspoken "we want you, let's convince you to list us as #1 if you aren't already there." I liken this to graduate school preview days, where your acceptance is your bid and the school really wants you to accept their acceptance.

Now, this can go 2 ways. If it's a house that's quite popular, your pref night could be in a cardboard box lit by glowsticks and PNMs are still ranking your house #1 in the finest penmanship. If it's a house that's meh, you really are making a sell to at least half the women attending. To me, it's most likely your chapter "wants" them*. It it's a struggling house your PNMs don't really care for or know about, that Pref is as hard a sell as your first round rush party. Am I right on this?

On to my asterisk: how does NPC define "want"? Is it an intrapersonal "the last few days getting to know you have been amazing, let's go steady" want, or a straightforward "our quota is a number we need to fill and we want you to be a member"? Or is this respective to the scenarios I listed above? In other words, are there chapters that, when bid matching (either by hand or machine) want everyone on their first bid list? Like over the moon, "she NEEDS to be my sister" want.

Also, is the machine matching so automated that you get women on your list that everyone's like "...oh, ok. yay :/"

By the time pref comes around, most groups have sorted to their main competitors. The women at the pref parties for the weak recruiting chapters generally have accepted that they won't be getting a bid to a strong recruiting chapter, and the parties are no more hard sell than your other parties. Maybe your really struggling chapter with a mandate to fill a quota or lose their chapter may come across that way, but for the most part it's about building relationships with people who have something in common with you. A few women will feel out of place at any given place, but most will feel like they are welcome. I haven't seen many collegians that are comfortable with or good at the prolonged or impassioned "hard sell." Most move on to talk about something else after a couple minutes.

Don't forget the Very Satisfied Smug Face!

Which helps the wounds from the poorly aimed dart heal much, much faster!

You've nailed the preference conversation conundrum of the ages. How do you go about closing the sale? You have to customize for each rushee. One, you have to love and you're going to be just the very best of friends for ever and ever. Another will respond to offers of leadership. One will respond to a businesslike approach of responsibilities and benefits. And some you just have to make understand that really, it's going to be ok even though you didn't get invited to pref at your dream chapter. Putting it down to numbers would seem crass, but I was told that because of my chapter's smaller size I would have opportunities for leadership sooner than in a larger chapter. They found what button to push!

Technically with RFM nobody should end up at your preference party that you don't already want, but with 150+ members in a chapter, there will definitely be a variation of opinion about every girl on the pledge list.

I was in a "weak-recruiting chapter", so here's a perspective from that end:

Every round, there were disappointments for us: women we wanted who didn't return to our chapter. We knew we were a WRC, and that we were competing with SRCs, and that Patty Perfect PNM might not be on our list, but I have been the one (as chapter president) to break the news to an active collegian that her little sister had declined our invitation. Those hurt.

But just as we tell PNMs (and as my Rho Chi once said to me) to have an open mind and to look at the chapters left on their invite list as the only chapters on campus, each round, we'd do our best to refocus on the pool of PNMs that we DID have, and find something to love about each one.

Are there women we are over-the-moon to have, versus women we aren't? Well, they are on the bid list in an order, but in a chapter like mine (over 100 women), it's not at all like we are going to have a homogenous opinion. There were women in my chapter who were "rush crushes" for some of my sisters that I didn't feel a strong affection for, and vice-versa. Further, someone who didn't shine during FR may just not have met the right women in the chapter to really "click". But the bottom line is that I loved my chapter and my sisters, and I firmly believe that any woman who meets the requirements of membership will be an asset to the chapter in one way or another, and many in ways you just can't know during FR.

Excellent!

But what was way worse, pre-RFM is we would have the highest returns of any chapter in the middle rounds (back in my day it was 5 rounds) and then end up with a fraction of quota. The problem is we could compete, right up until preference. And that was always SOOOOOO disappointing. But that's where sidewalk talk is a killer. They liked us enough to keep us through rush, but too scared to pull the trigger at the end with a lesser known entity. With RFM, the rushees are having to take a chance with that iffy chapter. And of course, the brave ones are getting the rewards of the great chapter that they didn't appreciate during rush. And it only takes a few of those rush cycles for the girls who aren't so brave to also jump in. And before long, that "who are they again" thing is gone.

Before RFM, WRC and even ARC (average recruiting chapters) were sitting ducks. My granddaughter (you call them littles, we called them daughters) was a recruitment counselor and called me in tears after bids were handed out. We had about 4 chapters on our campus who were notorious for over inviting for pref. By over inviting I mean that their quota was 30 and they would invite 300 to pref because they wanted to have full parties. Three girls in her rush group went to preference at two of the four. She was lucky to only have three, some of her colleagues had as many as 7 or 8. Snap bids were very common. We had a list of girls who came to us the round before pref but did not match and usually got anywhere from 3-10 of those women before Bid Day even began.

I wish RFM had come along about 5 years earlier. My campus would look very different. I really believe that at least two of the four chapters who left in the 90s would have survived with RFM.

I also believe that if RFM had been available in the late 80's/early 90's, the Greek system at Michigan State would look very different. Tri Delta, AGD, Phi Mu and Alpha Xi Delta all left campus within a few years of each other.

Even though I was chapter president, I honestly don't remember much about the invite lists, percentages and all that (except how crushing it was to get our bid lists). I just know that no matter how hard we worked, we were doomed. Our chapter house was also extremely uncompetitive. We were on sorority row, but had the most unappealing house by far. I don't know what the alums were thinking when they built it.

We were told over and over again by national workers that we could overcome the hindrance of the house, but I do not believe that was possible. Not when you have six other gorgeous houses on the same two blocks (and others elsewhere) and yours is nothing like the rest. Zeta was directly across the street from us and they put a lot of money into their physical structure. They did survive and now my understanding is they are doing pretty well.

I remember going to Purdue for Leadership School and seeing the huge, gorgeous brand new DDD house there and feeling absolutely sick that Tri Delta built that house for them and we could do nothing.

And then there was the decision to bring on AOPi when there were multiple chapters not making quota each fall.

And then there were the hostile tiers where people would cross the street rather than speak to you.

And then there's the university administration that really isn't supportive of the Greek system at all.

Yeah, it's really a wonder that system survives at all, to be perfectly honest.