Hang in there! I cannot even imagine.

Cold!
 

Here is a link to a picture from recruitment today. The high was 16 and the wind chill was lower! Young women often wait outside for 10 minutes or so to get in the houses at their scheduled time. I wish they would pick a better time of year!

http://media.ids.s3.amazonaws.com/55...ment01webf.jpg

Many of the houses are allowing the pnms to wait inside their houses rather than in front of the house.

I cannot even begin to imagine that kind of cold. Thinking warm thoughts for all the PNMs.

My first thought when I saw all the coats was, "What in the heck do they do with all those coats during a party???" If they keep them on, trying to put a face to a name is discussion would be interesting. "Oh, Gretchen was the cute blond wearing the black puffy coat". Oh, wait, they are ALL wearing black puffy coats. If the pmn holds them, it makes for a nightmare to move around in close quarters. If the sorority women take them, what a trial at the end of the party getting them back to the right PNM. And talk about hat hair!! Glad our school does fall recruitment.

Just an FYI, when we have weather situations, Panhellenic will have ALL the houses do inside starts. I would question any house who would not bring these women out of the cold.

We are used to cold weather recruitment, so we have organized coat checks for later rounds (when the pnms are in skirts/dresses). For now, the recruiter will take and hold the coat however many pnms are keeping their coats on since the houses are cold as well ( try and maintain 70degrees inside when you have the doors open for 10 minutes out of every hour.

Ditto. Lots of PNMs will have their name tags pinned to their coats, so it becomes "Suzie the blonde with the roller skate nametag who liked X." Thank god for rho gam name tags or I'd have been hopelessly lost

Does anyone know which houses have a higher GPA requirement than 2.8? It would be good to know which have dropped girls for the weekend round because of that.

That's a great way to do name tags! Right before I started school they eliminated the custom name tags the chapters at Iowa did. They did cutesy and VERY involved construction paper name tags for every girl attending every party. It was a huge amount of work. With all the other crap going on can you imagine keeping all that straight before parties? And the girls spending all summer cutting and gluing the name tags together for the several hundred that would have been needed! Oh the horror. And this was before RFM so everyone invited more girls and you never knew how many girls were gonna show up the next day.

The coats? I cannot imagine 800+ pairs of snowy boots marching into a house two days in a row.

That is private information.

What is the reason for that? Seems like it would be a decent thing in this brutal process, so girls could know why a particular house didn't invite them back.

You are asking about membership selection, which is private to each chapter. The criteria for receiving an invitation are not divulged or discussed outside the actives in the chapter.

I'd figured that an objective criterion that disqualifies girls from consideration would be disclosed to PNMs, just as the 2.8 is. Silly me.

Please understand with the sheer number of women going through the recruitment process at IU, there are many women who were genuinely liked by a chapter but were ranked too low to be on the invitation list. Each chapter's criteria for ranking is private and falls under what we call membership selection. Possible criteria could be GPA, campus involvement, legacy status, connections inside the chapter. One never knows.

There are a few chapters at IU who were rumored to be looking to boost or maintain their chapter GPA and would be looking for women with higher GPAs, even so there will be exceptions. A chapter can say they are looking for 3.0+ but in all reality there will be a few women in the pledge class under that arbitrary number.

Cuts are hard and truthfully, there is often no rhyme or reason for not being invited back. Sometimes it's just best to move on and concentrate on the positive. PNMs who can focus on the chapters who did invite them back and find the positive in each chapter tend to fare better throughout the process.

ITA. My daughter went in with a completely open mind, and tried not to have preconceptions about any house. She got invitations from several of the ones she liked best. Of course she was disappointed about others (and not so pleased to get invites from houses she didn't like at all!) but said today was great and she's excited for tomorrow. I cant ask for more at this point!

I would focus on that and try not to think about the "why." As previously stated, there is often no exact "why" - just because there are so many PNMs and someone has to go. Every chapter has their own criteria based on perceived needs. It's impossible to discern that from the outside. Continued good recruitment to your daughter.

I gave you an honest explanation. Sorry you didn't like it. You took offense at nothing.

Good luck to your daughter.

Eek - I hope you meant that more along the lines of "less excited but still happy/grateful to be invited back to the houses she liked less than others".

Wow, lighten up, everyone! I wasn't offended but am sorry that you were. My comment wasn't directed to any person but to the process. As you might guess from my username, this is all new to me - I went to a school that had no Greek organizations.

From what I've read here, IU's recruitment is known for being particularly hard on the girls. So I was looking for information that could help allay hurt feelings should they arise. The recruitment website says some chapters may have a higher GPA minimum and I naively assumed those would be available somewhere. I now understand why they aren't (thank you IndianaSigKap!).

Thank you to those who wished my daughter well, and I wish the same for all moms and daughters going through this very interesting but very difficult process.

You have to understand that this…

..sounded extremely condescending and sarcastic. Whether you were directing it at AZTheta or not, I don't know, but putting down a process that you yourself have admitted you know nothing about is not exactly going to make you friends here. Every NPC sorority at every campus has private membership selection criteria. That's just how it is.

I'm guessing the chapter-specific GPA requirements are still included in the information the PNMs get when they sign up for recruitment and/or attend information sessions.

ItsGreektoMe
 

Two things to keep in mind -

1. Recruitment is competitive, in that the pnms are, in a way, competing against each other. If your daughter had all the objective criteria needed, and others did also, the chapter might have to decide amongst themselves which to issue their limited invitations to - did you realize that chapters have only a certain number of invitations they can issue to each round? Once you have the objective criteria, it's down to the subjective criteria. It is entirely possible that, could you know the objective criteria for every chapter, you STILL would not know why your daughter did not get invitations to all the sororities she was interested in, but it may well have been because they simply did not have enough spaces in their parties for all those who were qualified.

2. There really isn't anything you can say to allay hurt feelings very much. Rejection - for whatever reason -is going to hurt. Those who have a successful recruitment KEEP AN OPEN MIND and realize that every chapter has something to offer, and those who have invited them are really INTERESTED IN HAVING THEM AS SISTERS. Don't agonize over what might have been - look at what could be!

Good luck to her

And should you daughter experience disappointment with the invitations she receives, it may be helpful to point out that ABC, XYZ, and iJ(or however many do invite her back)DID want to see her again and talk that angle up. If your daughter can put aside any disappointment and face the day with a smile and a positive attitude she stands a much better chance of continuing to impress those who issued the invites. If the least favored sororities pick up on her displeasure, they may feel that issuing her an invitation to the next round would be a wasted effort and give that invitation to someone else.

As an outsider to the process, having your daughter go through rush at IU is kind of like graduating high school and going straight to PhD work, with no understanding of the course work.

There are about 1600 girls going through rush this year. For each chapter there are probably not 100 girls who don't meet their objective criteria. After that they have to go from 1500 to about 55 in 4 rounds of parties and about an hour and a half of total talk time. Objectively you can't take this process seriously, but in real life it feels an awful like being judged and found unworthy.

Let me see if I can explain the process a bit. The girls they want to cut are easy - the ones who were rude, the ones who are seriously weird, the no shows - so that eliminates 100 girls. (Making up numbers here since each house will be different AND I'm not privy to this information) The chapter hasto cut to 700 girls. So let's go back and cut the girls who someone had heard something bad about, had a rude post on Facebook, seemed like she might be too quiet for us. Ok, that's another 100 girls. They're now at 1400, every girl left is worthy of an invitation. But they are still required to cut to 700. They have to invite back all of their legacies (many sororities have this rule for after round 1) and there are 200 legacies going through, so that uses up nearly 1/3 of their spots. So they start cutting based on goals they have for the chapter. Need to work on our chapter GPA? Cut anyone below a 2.9. Whatever. Then they finally get to the 700 plus whatever number gets to be on their "flex list," let's say another 100 girls. They have their 700 plus 100 girls who will be added in if anyone of the top 700 don't accept their invitation. Your daughter is number 710. She made it past 590 girls! And really, when you factor out the legacies, she made it past 790 girls! And the flex list made it to 709 before the list was full. That is going to feel like they hated her but it simply isn't the case. And that could happen for every single chapter. It's not likely to; the vast majority of girls find a sorority home but there are perfectly nice perfectly qualified girls every year who just simply had bad luck.

Does that help or make it worse?

That's a good explanation.

I'm not an IU expert, but in all sorority recruitments there is always the element of having friends on the inside pulling for you as well. That's not going to show up in a quantifiable way, but it's a factor.

Let me try and see if I can get it right this time.


First, I sincerely apologize for the post that gave offense. To repeat, my issue was with the rush process, not any individual. FWIW, yesterday I felt physically lousy as well as stressed by several difficult situations in my life. I'm sure all of that contributed to my poor choice of words. I hope you will forgive that lapse.

Second, I freely admit to ignorance about everything connected with sorority life. I thank those who explained the "criteria" issue; I'm now better informed.

Third, I of course recognize that the numbers at IU are overwhelming. Similar to college admissions, many wonderful candidates must be eliminated, and they won't know why they didn't make the cut.

Finally, my daughter (whose general m.o. is to keep a positive attitude) is handling the process extremely well. After feeling tense the first day, she decided to "chill" and enjoy the experience. She was fortunate to receive a large number of second round invitations and is in no way dwelling on "favorites" that weren't on the list. I've encouraged her to keep an open mind about all of the houses, and I have complete faith in her ability to intuit the best places for her – recognizing the decision is ultimately out of her hands.

Also, as far as the grade issue, please be aware that the minimum GPA required to go through formal rush is often if not usually lower than that of individual chapters.

And we DO understand what you're getting at - grades are an important factor so therefore there must be a line of demarkation. There really isn't. At the headquarters level there is a number below which the chapter cannot cross. But that is usually WELL lower than their functional minimum GPA. For instance, I believe my sorority's national minimum is a 2.5. At IU I think you have to have a 2.8 to even participate, and the chapters who are really making grade cuts are probably cutting above to well above that number. But if there's that perfect girl, many girls in the chapter know and love her, she's a legacy, her resume is 9 miles long, and she has a 2.8? Yeah, they might let that one slip through. It depends on chapter and inter/national rules of the sorority, the needs of a particular chapter, etc. and is not consistent across all sororities. This is a very confusing business. Keep your head up, keep the wine corked and ready, and try to stay positive and chapter-neutral with your daughter as the process progresses.

Just as a FYI, an ice storm is predicted for this afternoon and into tomorrow. Bloomington is on the southern edge, so hopefully will be spared. But this does mean I might be spending an extra day in Bloomington if I can't get home to Indy tonight/ tomorrow morning.

I have been watching the storm. I was at our chapter house at Purdue all day checking in girls to move in and left early to get home before the ice storm comes.

Safe travels!!!!

I have two daughters at IU, a sophomore active and a senior who had little success with the process and never joined a sorority. So, I have gone through this as a mom with a PNM daughter in 2012, 2013 and 2014. In our experience, the info that DubaiSis is giving is very realistic and accurate. Having wine on hand for mom is also a very good idea.

I just scraped the ice off of my windshield so I can leave bright and early tomorrow. Ugggghhhhh.

I am so glad I live in Texas.(At least from October-June) We think cold is 40 degrees and a week of 32 degrees is all over the news. Y'all stay warm up there.

Pledge Class Numbers
 

Just wondering why some on the list don't have numbers posted from last year... Kappa, Chi O, AGD... and speaking of Chi O I've heard that they only asked 400 girls back for the "16" Party.. is that possible? How can they be that harsh after what is basically an Open House?

The number of women a chapter is allowed to invite is calculated using RFM, which uses the acceptance rates from the previous years to predict how many women the chapter will need to invite back to make quota. For example if a chapter has a 90% return rate that means that 90% of the women they invited to the same round last year ranked them in their top group (accepting the invitation). So if a chapter's quota is 45 and they have a 90% return rate, they will only be allowed to extend a small number of invitations to preference.

The numbers here are self-reported, reported by others who get the numbers or are published (like in the school newspapers). At least one sorority NEVER posts their numbers so if you see a number listed for them, a non-member gave it. That is their prerogative. Some think it's none of your business how many new members they took. Others don't want to post an unsuccessful number. Others it just never gets reported for no clear reason. Or in other words, don't read anything into a chapter not having a quota number listed here. At IU they all made quota, whatever that number may be.

How long is IU's rush again? Because if someone needs life flighted in a helicopter they're going to be SOL as all the helicopters are busy.

In all seriousness, as I stated in a previous post, this is deferred rush and the rushees have had a whole semester to get to know sorority members. So no sorority is going solely on what happened at an open house.