It's pretty much an informal rush except for the fact that we went to 8 houses for half an hour each on Monday. The schedule's going like this:

Monday evening: Visit 8 houses

Monday night: Receive calls from chapters inviting you back to their house for an hour each, to show slideshows and meet more girls

Tuesday evening: Go to the parties that you were invited to

Tuesday night: Receive calls from chapters inviting you to a chapter event

Wednesday evening: Chapter events

Thursday afternoon: Go to the Greek life office to rank houses

Thursday evening: Receive bids!

So we interact directly with the chapters rather than our recruitment counselor (who I only saw on Monday and probably won't see again until tomorrow... if I receive a bid)

We were told that we could decline parties... it was recommended that we thank the houses and tell them that we were considering another chapter.

All in all (I know that was long, I tend to ramble), I'm good!

Well did you get a call?

This sounds like a recipe for lots of dirty rushing and recruitment infractions. WTF is going on at this school?

(Sundance - obviously not directed towards you, since you have no control over how they do recruitment.)

Sundance...thoughts on courtesy
 

Sundance,
Did you give any thought to common courtesy? The houses that you did not wish to visit had prepared for you and wanted to become better acquainted. You have snubbed them.
On your campus you will meet and interact with girls from those houses later. Perhaps these were not your "ideal", but I feel your actions were disrespectful. At least you should have contacted the Panhellenic organization at your college and sent regrets.
As one of the posters indicated you may have placed yourself in a difficult postition to obtain a bid, depending upon the rules of Panellenic at your campus.
I went to a private university with long established sororities and a strong Panhellenic organization. Frankly, even in an informal rush situation I cannot imagine a potential member ignoring an invitation and not appearing without some explanation. :(

Ziasha, yes I did get a call :)

And I did inform the chapters that I would not be attending; I didn't just not show up. It seemed that a lot of girls did the same since some of the parties were held at the same time, and even with the option of leaving halfway through a party to attend another one, many girls wanted to stay at a house that they loved.

At my school, informal rush usually consists of girls going to whichever houses they choose (parties are advertised in the school newspaper and whatnot), and then chapters call you back to invite you to further events. This year, Panhellenic just took it a bit further and added the first day where we went to 8 houses.

Now it's time to go to class, so I'll update when I get back from my chapter event tonight. Hopefully this will all end well and you guys can stop worrying! :)

It does sound rather odd but until we know what school she's at and how their Panhellenic runs recruitment, all we can do is speculate & criticize the way it's being done. I think that b/c most of us here went through a more "structured" format of recruitment, the way this school is doing things is rather strange but probably not completely unheard of.


Either way, I hope you do get Mars. Good-luck!

good luck sundance!! i hope that you have a great time tonite!:)

The NPC is now supporting four separate styles of recruitment, from fully-structured to informal, with the understanding that one style will not fit all campuses.

Sundance, I hope it works out for you, but you are on thin ice choosing one house so early on.

It's odd that ALL of the parties were at the same time (or that's what I got from her posts) but I can understand not wanting to leave early.

Did she state that these were indeed all NPC groups? Perhaps these are local, regional or non-NPC national groups

I am also curious if they were all scheduled for the same time. I hope it all works out for you, but the place where you think you're meant to go (as of right now) may not really be the place for you. I truly believe you end up where you're meant to be and that can't happen if you don't give everyone a fair shot. I understand that your structure of recruitment is quite different, but I think you were being unfair-not just to the other chapters, but to yourself.
If everything falls into place, then you may have made your decision easier and I hope it all works out. However, if it does not, please understand that you may have contributed to the reason why.
Best of luck, though, and please keep us posted. Can't wait to hear the results.

Sundance Last Party
 

It is about 11 o'clock ET. I wonder if Sundance received that special phone call.

wait for which event? she said earlier today she'd gotten called back - i wonder what it was for.

sundance, here's hoping that this time tomorrow night you'll have gotten another happy phonecall :) good luck with mars!

It looks like calls aren't being made tonight, Football Fan. I think she won't know anything until tomorrow night.

I agree that this recruitment process is kinda bizarre. I guess it's fine if it works for them though.:confused:

Oops. I thought the call was to be made tonight. You are correct.

Okay, so I'm back from my chapter event for Mars!

I can't say much about the night without divulging where we went or what we did (I'm good at the discretion thing aren't I? ;)), but I can say that I had yet another amazing time.

From reading some of your posts, I see that I may have made some poor choices and judgment calls... and if that's wrong, then I don't want to be right. I really like these girls (and the other girls that are rushing the same house too!), and I just hope for the best. If not, there's always COR throughout next week, or maybe it just wasn't meant to be.

However, it all comes down to tomorrow. We rank our top choices before 2 P.M. tomorrow (I have no choice but to suicide, of course)... and then it's bid time at 5.

I know I didn't go through rush like I should have... but now there's no turning back. If I don't get a bid, I will still let you guys know, and you guys can say "I told you so!" :o

Good luck Sundance, I hope you get that call today.

Crossing my fingers for you, but I think it's important to realize (as I did) that first impressions can be wrong. I fell in love with one sorority but they didn't invite me back. The sorority I dropped did and then I felt like it was the perfect place for me.
I hope that you get Mars, but if you don't, give some others a fair chance too :) You may discover the perfect place for you during COR.

So it doesn't sound like she really snubbed them. Maybe it wasn't an excused absence in the eyes of the chapters, but she didn't just sit around and be like "F Saturn I am too good for them".

good luck sundance. i hope you get that bid!!

i am curious to find out at which college campus this recruitment is occuring. it is quite different from anything i have ever heard of-sort of a formal/informal melange'.

To reiterate once again: Good Luck!! Got my fingers and toes crossed for you :D

Bids are being distributed in a half an hour... hopefully we have some good news!!! Good luck Sundance!!! :)

Good luck Sundance!!! Hope you get a bid :)

I guess we won't know for a while as it is almost 5pm EST (GC must be CST) - Bid Day. *Keeping fingers crossed* Hoping for a good outcome since she hopefully did not get *the call*.

I'm excited to find out! I hate waiting lol

I want to know what happened!!!!! It's 7pm EST

Well if she got a bid, she's probably with her sisters right now.

Perhaps she is out having a good time with the Martians. Then again, are you sure she is Back East? It's not yet 5 p.m. in the Pacific Time Zone.

Also true.

drat and here i was hoping that we'd hear the good news by now.

hope you're out having fun if you got the call (though if she's on the WC i guess she'd be hearing right about now). sending you good luck vibes :)

Well, it's about 9PM my time right now, so yes, I'm not on the east coast. :)

It's obviously safe to say now that I was rushing at UCLA... so I guess our spring rush style is kind of odd: eight of the houses participated in what I went through, and two other houses held their own kind of "invite only" rush. One house didn't hold spring recruitment.

At around noon I went to suicide Mars. I had my phone by my side all day after that, hoping it wouldn't ring and frantically checking if it did ring to make sure it was just a friend.

At around 4PM I still didn't receive a negative phone call, so I figured I was in the clear. I was going to post a happy message here, but I guess I forgot!

Finally near 5PM I headed down to receive what I knew was my bid to Mars! I got my little envelope, opened it up, and sure enough... it was a bid to...
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GAMMA PHI BETA!!!!

I took a moment to realize that this was all actually happening (this week has been so weird for me... I went from "I don't think I'd join a sorority" to "This seems kind of fun" to pledge!), and headed over to the house to meet my pledge class and all of my new sisters. We had dinner, played some group games, tried to learn everyone's names and headed over to BJ's for pizookies (mmm!). Now I'm back, and I'll probably go out again with the girls for an "unofficial extended bid day"!

Thanks for all the support throughout my hectic week... I know I was far from the ideal rushee, but I've taken all of your suggestions to heart! My little sister is going off to college next year, so now I know exactly how to school her if she decides to rush ;))

Yay for Gamma Phi!!

aww yay! your gut instinct proved right :D
congratulations!

eta: no wonder she said people didn't want to leave the parties on wednesday, looks like they'd have had a heck of a lot of running around to be doing (especially her, had she gone to all five)

http://www.npcbruins.com/page.php?page_id=6491

Congratulations to you and to Gamma Phi Beta! I'm glad it all turned out well for you.

Sundance,
You mentioned two friends and your roommate were also going through rush. Did they pledge? If so, could you let us know? Thanks.

Congratulations to both you and GPhiB!

Yay!!! I'm so happy for you! I hope you have an amazing time with your new sisters! I'm glad you found your home.

Yay! That's the beautiful Gamma Phi house in the photo on the site, too!

Sundance, congrats to you! The UCLA chapter is great, kindof a "sister" chapter of zeta theta chapter at Pepperdine, and y'all have strong alumnae support. I know you'll have a wonderful time!

YAY!
 

:) Congratulations on joining Gamma Phi & welcome to the Syracuse Triad!! :)