Thanks for your answer!
 

All of those examples are shocking to me. It mainly seems surprising that the people doing all that stuff expect to get away with it AND, even more so, expect that it will "work."

Common sense would tell me that matching a girl to a group she doesn't want will only cause more de-pledging.

I can't say that I think a law suit about rush would be appropriate, but taking these cases to the Greek Life advisors supervisors at the university should happen.

I would have thought that all the computer matching would make all this tampering less likely.

except there are still alot of campuses that don't use computers for matching. It's still done the oldfashioned way, by hand. That said, the bid lists should never been in anyone's possession except the chapter's advisor attending recruitment. The Greek Life advisor should not even be present during bid matching, or at least be there as a neutral party.

One more thing to worry about come January recruitment!

Legacy status can be a good or bad thing depending on the chapter and other sororities on campus;

quota additions seem to favor the "good chapters";

modernized invitation numbers seem to favor the weaker chapters creating an even greater demand for an invite to a top house since supply is down;

and now throwing girls into houses that they don't want at all?

I don't think it "favors" the weaker chapters - it simply is forcing the rushees and sororities who invite everyone with a uterus to "get real." If the rushees were realistic, they wouldn't keep wanting a chapter that doesn't want them. If the sororities were realistic, they wouldn't keep inviting back girls they don't want just for the sake of insurance. Plus it can't help that sorority (or Greek life overall) when the rushees realize they've been played the whole time - that they weren't really wanted.

Computers aren't necessarily perfect...they're only as good as the humans entering the info. Of course, I'm sure a lot of the errors blamed on computers are traceable to someONE instead of someTHING.

Ok, just had to comment here on this thread, which is something since I haven't done that in a while.

I have witnessed situations where a pnm doesn't get a bid from one of the chapters listed on her pref card. This is always (at my campus) because the chapters she did list hit quota. Another chapter is still really interested in her and decides it's worth a shot to keep her on their list. After bid matching, she is essentially snap bid by the other chapter. She may have dropped them b/c she didn't like them or b/c she didn't attend their events b/c she had to cut chapters, even if she were interested in them. Since she did not list that chapter on her pref card, it is not a binding bid and she can say no and then go to COB and COR events in the spring. Panehl should call her and tell her what is up. She should not show up to bid day with a bid from a chapter she did not list.

I do have to disagree with the comment that greek advisors should not be present at bid matching. I want to know what is going on with the system that I manage and I'm usually the one mediating the matching (reading the cards and that whole process). I don't understand why the gree or panhel advisor would not be present. I know there are some greek advisors who are a little off kilter, but there's nothing saying that HQ staff or chapter advisors are not the same way. The GA can be the neutral 3rd party that helps to keep everything in balance and to make sure all possibilities to match women are explored and to overcome blocks that may form. As always, there may be exceptions. I can just tell you that anywhere I work as a Greek Advisor, I better not have anyone tell me that I cannot be present during bid matching.

This did happen to my daughter. She didn't even go to any pref parties so she didn't sign a bid card but she received a bid from a group anyway, which she (I hope politely!) declined.

UCFStefanie-- did you rank Theta number one on your bid card, and Chapter AB second, after you attended prefs at Chapter AB? That could account for how you received a bid to Theta. The UCF PX's aren't in the room during bid matching, so there wouldn't have been any way for them to know. Either way, I'm very happy you got your bid and became a part of the UCF Theta sisterhood! :)

adpiucf You know it is all a blur at the moment to be honest.

I was quite upset that I only went to one pref and I didnt vote when other PNMs voted. I wrote down my rank and gave them to my rho gamma and she input them into the computer for me so that I did not have to wait around an hour and a half while the other PNMs went to a pref.

At one point she told me that if I didnt put group AB first that I would not get a bid so I went back and forth in my head on which group to put first.

I am assuming that I put Theta first thought because group AB is not a group at that typically gets quota

curious
 

Just out of curiosity, how were these ladies as members?

SigK_Bama addressed that earlier in the thread.

I'm very surprised by this. If I'd opened my bid on Bid Day and found a bid from a chapter I'd dropped, I would've been devastated. These girls deserved a phone call at the very least.

SigK_Bama, when I joined our chapter we were one of the smaller houses on campus. I was the recruitment chair my junior year, and we emphasized the same thing we'd been insisting on for years - quality over quantity. It paid off: for the past two years, our chapter has made quota plus with women they truly wanted as sisters. Our recruitment advisors wholeheartedly supported our philosophy. If one of them had tried to pull a stunt like yours did, I don't know what we would've done. Talk about not acting in the best interest of the chapter! You and your sisters should've been given the final choice in the matter, because it's your chapter. I'd be beyond outraged!

During my time... we had a serial rusher... she would rush every year because TUV would tell her that this would be the year she would get a bid and every year they would find other girls who ranked higher and every year she would go back to the same group... until finally her jr or sr year she got her wish... talk about bid promising... but it was the only group she wanted and would turn down everyone else. I just always felt bad for her.

That is the problem we have with deferred recruitment... the school adm wants the freshman to have a semester without letters (but they have them in the form of dirty rushing) and retention for the school would be higher because they girls would find a home right away.

Also I think that quota additions do only help the "top" groups, unless all the groups are hitting quota. But I also think that if a PNM plays by the rules, then they should get a bid. I do like the release figure system based on previous proformance.

As to the topic at hand...

I have never heard of this and these are all really horrible stories but maybe it is the schools way of modified quota additions... they are just trying to give a bid to all the girls that played by the rules without giving the chapters with quota additional numbers. It isn't right but ... maybe some campuses with only 3 or 4 chapters could use this... especially if they have to drop chapters just because they have to eliminate groups... but the girls really wouldn't care what group they joined, as long as they joined a group... not like the serial bid promised girl.

While I agree some girls just want to wear letters no matter the letters, I think mot girls do care about what group they join. If I got a bid from a group that I didn't like at all, why would I go ahead and accept the bid? This would lead to the full number o bids being given out and chapters falling short of quota because of girls not accepting the bid.

Back to beginning topic. At The University of Texas they have guaranteed placement. This means that if you maximize your options for each round - including pref where you can go to 3 but are only required to go to 2 - you are guaranteed a bid. This bid will be from one of the groups you attended at pref. What this means is that the groups that make quota (a chapter won't get women through guaranteed placement if they don't make quota) get quota addtion on steriods. It's not limited to 5% per chapter. I don't recall what all the rules to matching the women (smallest chapter and all that). This has been going on at UT for at least 10 years. They took it from another campus.

I've also heard of the other mentioned case where you could get a bid from a group you only saw during open house. A fellow advisor had a daughter that went through recruitment at Texas Christian University (TCU) and they apparently did this. You were guaranteed a bid, but it could be to any chapter on campus, not just the ones you visited on pref.

I'm a little confused
 

Since the girls only match to someone they preffed, is the reason that groups who don't make quota don't get additions that they've already gone through the bid list and matched everyone they could already?

I don't want to see PNM forced to joined groups they don't want (or face penalties for not accepting a bid to someone they don't want), but it seems to me that quota additions and guaranteed matching should be designed to favor the groups who didn't make quota or who are already the smallest.

If not, aren't the big just going to get bigger and the small smaller?

OR we could have a system that just let everyone issue as many bids as they wanted to. That'd be okay with me too, but seems contrary to the policies and goals of NPC.

This question goes way beyond the scope of anything I'm really entitled to know, but could an official rush advisor anonymously post modified data on a schools rush to basically show how different systems work? Like make up group names and return rates, and walk up through what happens at schools with different systems? I'll post this questions in the quota additions thread too, and if the moderator wants to delete here, I'll understand.

Many, many of the smaller groups on big campuses are enlarging by means of the new release figures.With those, I've seen sororities that were never close to quota just a few years ago hit quota regularly. Since quota additions seem to be done in various ways, I have no clue about that--but for sure, release figures are helping the smaller ones.

Thanks, Carnation
 

It surely would seem to help the small chapters, but the situation that TxGirl described basically cut the non-quota making groups out of the process, I thought.

But I guess if quota additions are only for girls who maximized options, the girls who preffed the smaller chapters would have already matched to them through regular big matching or they wouldn't be eligible for quota additions because they didn't list the smaller group on the bid card.

Do school still give girls the option to "regret with interest" when they've been invited back to more pref parties than the schedule allows them to attend?

Would it be considered bad form or prohibited for groups who were interesed in a girl who declined their pref. party in favor of another "with interest" to put this girl on their bid list? Is this situation partially what happens when girls match where they don't pref?

In that case girls could still create back up options (sort of a way to say, "I'd take snap bids from these other groups" in advance) without being at the mercy of Greek life.

At the University of Alabama, my daughter received more invitations back than she could attend at each stage, including six invitations for preference day when she was allowed only three. During each round she was able to decline "with interest" which I assume permitted her to be eligible for re-consideration if things didn't work out with her original selections.

If only invited to two chapters for pref and she goes to those two chapters for pref AND places both of them on her bid card then she is eligible for guaranteed placement. If she only went to one (if that was allowed) or if she only put one on her bid card then she did not maximize b/c she had two options.

Guaranteed placement only favors those chapters that make quota, so in some instances it could be a case of the big getting bigger. That's how it was at UT. If there is a smaller group that never makes quota - they will never get guaranteed placement. If there was still someone to guarantee place then the smaller group would have had them put on their bid list already.

It does not force them to join a group they do not want - because they should only put down chapters that they attend that they would accept a bid from. If they would accept from any on their card it wouldn't be an issue. Of course we all know that's a perfect world - not the "rush" world where Suzie Rushee has her heart set on XYZ before recruitment events get started!

Carnation makes a good point as well. The new release figure system is allowing more chapters to make quota - some as she said that haven't been there in years.

I haven't looked at UT's numbers since they implemented the new release figure method (RFM) - but I know that it has helped some chapters on that campus. As with anything - all chapters won't improve (i.e. make quota) overnight. But, it the new RFM at least gives them the chance.

At some campuses you can still regret with interest. I don't know if this is compatable with the RFM. I do know that reinviting a woman that declined your invite to a prior round (even if she was regret with interest) doesn't really work and that it messes up the statistics used.

Can you tell me more about this?

Let's imagine a system with first, second, third and prefs. Let's say a PNM receives invites to second round from 10 groups but at her campus, during second round you can only go to eight parties. Let's imagine that she likes almost all the groups, but she has to cut some. Now, imagine that after second round, she's not invited back to the maximum number of parties (let's say four) and she only gets invited back to three. Why would it not work for her to be able to be reinvited by one of the groups that she liked and that liked her if they wanted her to attend? It seems like it would be good all the way around.

I know that there are groups that PNM cut because they know they don't want bids, but if the PNM is still interested once she's cut by other groups and the group is still interested, what's the harm?

I want to stress that I don't think that girls should ever be matched to groups that they haven't indicated they'd take bids from. But why not allow people to keep all their options as long as both parties are interested?

This seems as a problem at some schools?

God, it may be easier to tell them all to forget it?:( Who needs this?:o

If they are not good enough then they are not.

But if they are, well, why put a YOUNG FEMALE through all of the pressure?:(

They can and will be accepted, yes?

I think that if a group has an open space that they can invite and still like
(or haven't found sufficient enough reason to totally cut), why not give her a chance. They might end up liking her more than someone they thought they liked better.;)

Of course, inviting to Pref is an entirely different bowl of cherries.

Remember, it's in a perfect world that the women that the chapter reinvites are ones that actually have open spaces. Also, a lot of PNM's put down regret with interest b/c they know (through the recruitment grape vine) that chapters see this and it looks better to regret with interest than to just regret. So, they may not really want to go back to the chapter. Of course then you have to factor in all the upset that they have that they didn't get invited back to enough chapters to go to one of their top choices.

All that being said, what usually happens when chapters reinvited (forget the regret with interest part) is that the majority don't come back because they already have a full event schedule (remember this is an accept/regret campus NOT priority). So they see that ABC reinvited them, but they got invites from enough of the chapters they went to prior round to not HAVE to go to ABC unless they want to. The majority don't pick to go back to ABC. What this does to the RFM is basically screw up the return rates for the round in question. This, in turn, can mess with the number the chapter is allowed to invite back for th next round and messes up the stats for the next year.

Take this scenario:

100 - Number of women in recruitment
80 - Number of women ABC has in their pool (meaning the number that came to their last event)
80 - Number of women ABC can invite to the next round

The chapter is not going to be allowed to invite back any more than is in their pool. So, if they want to reinvite, they are release women that actually attended their last event. Their working against the odds with the reinvites.

So say they do this:

70 - Number of women they invite that attend the last event
10 - Number of women they reinvite (with interest women)

If their historical return (which the RFM Specialist has when giving them the number to reinvite or carry) is 75% then they would have about 53 of the 70 come back. The return for reinvites is going to be much lower than this - say 25% so of the other 10 they might get 3 vs. a possible 8 with their historical figure.

So, yes, they might get a few through reinvites. What this also does is make their return rate look lower. They invited 80 and got 56 but they should have had 61. Remember, that's if they even get any of the reinvites. They could get none. So then it looks like they are doing worse than they actually are.

Priority works this differently. With priority the women rank a first choice cluster (if they can go to 8 then 8 are ranked as #1) and the rest in acutal rank order. They do not rank chapters they did not acutally attend - so reinvites won't work at all and again throw off the number for the RFM Specialist.

Sorry for the reallllly long post, but it's hard to explain any shorter! :)

TxGirl - I find that very interesting! UF didn't have regret with interest when I went through, so I've only recently been introduced to the idea, and I'd never really thought about what it would do to return rates. Thanks for sharing. :)

Thanks for that long explanation. I'm sorry I didn't see it before now.

My experience with rush is from before release figures (or at least before there were rewards for actually following them), so I still had in my mind the idea of a group being able to reinvite as many girls as they wanted to. I wasn't really considering the idea that a reinvite replaced an guest who actually attended the previous round.

I was thinking that reinvites might be a way for a chapter with lower return rates to pick back up girls who might be more interested in that particular chapter after being released by their early favorites after second round.

When I went through rush we could only "regret with interest"-which was annoying b/c if you wanted to cut one of the smaller chapters you really couldn't-their names would always show up on your list the next day and again you would have to pick "regret with interest." This did not help out the smaller chapters at all.

So you all couldn't cut groups at all? Did you all just rank houses and go back to all of them for the next round?

Or are you saying that if you didn't get the max number of invites back from your top picks, the "regret with interest" houses would show up again to fill in the rest of your parties when you really would have preferred not to go to a party than to go back to them?

Edit: or a third option came to me: you mean it was annoying to put down regret with interest on your rankings each round for the houses you weren't going back to? Simply writing it was annoying?

For the folks who know where they want to go and are actually going to be on the first bid list, I think showing up as guests at other houses and being nice and interested (or seeming to like houses that you want to cut) ultimately helps the PR of the house you end up in. Other girls will kind of say, "ah, Aggie, went AXO; she's a super girl; how awesome for them." And for everybody else, who might be in suspense about where they will end up, it keeps more options open.

But no one should get a bid from a house that they didn't pref and list on the bid card. That goes way beyond keeping options open.

Regretting with interest means that you want to go there, but can't fit them in. If you can't actually cut and can only RWI then when you get cut by the larger houses, you'll keep getting invited back to the smaller ones, and then keep RWI-ing them. So annoying on the PNM's side because she keeps going to houses that she isn't so interested in and RWI's them each time. Annoying for the small houses that have full parties but may not take quota because those women all want to go somewhere else.

Well, it seems to me that the small houses are probably better off having full houses for the parties than having empty ones. In my mind, they aren't more likely to make quota with fewer girls at each party; they'd be even less likely to make it. So, it may not be a big hardship for them to have girls who aren't crazy about being there at a few parties.

From the PNM's perspective, you might have to go to a few houses you aren't interested in, but how big a deal is that really? You meet some girls; you dazzle them with your charm; they know your future chapter got a great girl on bid day. At least, that's how it goes at UGA, in my opinion.

Yes, occasionally smaller chapters do believe that some girls who aren't really interested want to join them because the PNMs are such awesome guests and treat each rusher like she is the most interesting and charming person on the planet. But it's usually pretty clear by prefs who you will really see on bid day.

If a PNM's only option in declining is to regret with interest, I can see that you couldn't use it to determine if people were interested. If I'm remembering this correctly, back when I was in school and we were huddled around checking our party lists by firelight in the cave, you could straight up decline/regret, decline with interest, or accept.

When I asked about re-invites, I had in mind a system that allowed a PNM to make a distinction between a group she liked okay but wasn't in her top group for second round and a group she never wanted to see again.

With groups making their big releases maybe between different rounds, I can see that a girl who got invited back almost every place after first, but cut hard after second, might not mind having a full party schedule for third. But I can see from the very detailed answer why that doesn't work out in the long term. (Thanks again, TXgirl!)

My school had 5 chapters, none of which I would consider small vs. big though there was a range. PNMs there don't cut, they rank.

From the small chapters perspective it's hard to get a feel for how your return rates are (and how you'll do for quota) if you're getting predominantly PNMs who were dropped by other chapters. I don't know that there's really any way to solve that problem though.

As for the PNM's perspective, that's why it's an annoyance. It's not a big deal, but it's still annoying to list XYZ as a regret, yet still go see them every night.

Ideally, it might make a PNM reconsider the smaller houses, but if they still have their top three, they're probably not looking at their bottom two as viable options.

On one hand, maybe someone will show up who hadn't considered your sorority and be won over. But on the other hand, maybe the majority of the people at the party will be people who'd just as soon be there as have root canal, and aren't shy about showing it. You as a member of that sorority who's already stressed about being smaller, have to keep talking OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN to someone you know doesn't want to be there and doesn't like you. It's very draining for the sorority members. Think about in everyday life how annoying it is to put up w/ someone at your job who you know doesn't like you. Now transfer that to rush which is about 10,000 times more stressful.

And while I think do think it's good to "keep trying," I wouldn't want someone who feels so negatively about my sorority at pref. That's supposed to be a special evening and I'd hate to have a bunch of girls with bad vibes ruining things for the rushees who DO want to be there.

This is true no matter the size of the system, I'm afraid, and it's why it's so hard to have everyone make quota. I think that the release figures, quota additions, and everything else that NPC is doing are wonderful tools to improve the system and are helping a lot. At a few places, results are looking as close to perfect as possible. (I'm thinking Auburn and Alabama, who release data to the public.)

At my school there were 18 groups and the number of parties dropped gradually over four rounds. Girls who were invited back to more than the number of parties could drop groups. I think that the maximum number for second round was 10 or 12. I can imagine that, as far as the PNM was concerned after first round, there might not have been a bid difference between her 12th and 13th house, but the 13th one got dropped.

I just like pref can be the night that seals the deal, it can also break it. So those PNMs that loved you and have a crappy pref end up looking elsewhere.

OH NO, you don't invite jerks to prefs. (I don't think that qualifies as secret membership selection.) Root canal girl would be long gone. I agree that PNMs who project bad attitude are not helpful to anyone during rush.

Maybe it's a southern thing, but that's not how it goes down for most PNMs in the rushes I've heard about. This may be hard to believe, but almost all PNMs behave beautifully at all the parties. That's why it stands out so much when someone doesn't.

Almost every one of the 1200 PNMS has been raised to always be polite. The idea that one would openly seem disinterested in a conversation or openly show that you didn't like someone to her face would be unthinkable. (which is not to say that everyone acts the same way waiting to go into parties or that people aren't catty behind people's backs.) But at parties themselves, everything is super nice.

The first 2 days I did not have full parties and could not cut the houses but the rest of week I had full parties and even though I would cut these houses they still showed up on the list the next day (for me again to RWI). I did cut one of the larger houses on campus mid week as well and they did not show up on my list the next day. It made the smaller houses look desperate and did not help with their image.

Again, I did not go to these houses after the second day because I had full parties but it did not matter-their name showed up every morning on the list regardless.

ETA: I was NEVER rude to the girls in these chapters. One of my best friends was in one of the smaller chapters and I had been over to house many times the previous year (I rushed as a junior.) I knew all the struggles her chapter had been through and I knew that it was not for me. She was a rho chi the year I rushed and every morning she would greet me at the MSC where we got our lists and every morning she watched as I cut her chapter which I know had to make her sad-that is why it was annoying.