Okay, I got it! Thank you clemsongirl and Titchou!
After all of the posts I've read on here, I think I have a good understanding, but that threw me off a little bit!

This made me LOL.

This also depends on how many rounds were before pref (i.e. sometimes at smaller schools pref IS the only invitational round) but that's not what we're talking about here. :)

This was one of the main reasons for implementing RFM. Some chapters would keep inviting back women they had no interest in up to and including pref just so they could brag about having an overflowing room that was sometimes 5-6 times the expected number of quota. The women of course thought they were wanted and threw their eggs in that basket...and were sorely disappointed. If your history shows that 90% of the women at your pref rate you first and quota is 100, you can't invite back 600 women anymore.

When and where did this happen?

Not at Alabama that I know of -- we wouldn't have had the room or actives to accommodate 6x the expected quota on pref night.

I'm reading the post numbers as being hypothetical and artificially large probably to emphasize discrepancies in party attendance. Though not Bama, I can speak to one school where back in the day attendance was extremely lopsided to the detriment of the smallest chapter. But I don't want to detour there --- back to Bama! : )

Yes.

Yes - and it was not that long ago or far away. Go count closed chapters from just before RFM?

What am I missing?. Did it really say (p23 and p35)women who graduate from high school before December 2014 are considered upperclassmen?

But I don't think those chapters closed because stronger chapters were inviting 5-6x the quota of PNMs to pref and filling rooms with scads of girls they never intended to pledge.

Chapters that closed were probably struggling with numbers even earlier in the week. RFM keeps these chapters on PNM's lists where pre-RFM they may have been dropped earlier-on by PNMs.

It really did.

This should read December 2013, but apparently this error was missed in the proofing.

Yes.

My school was DEFINITELY one of the guilty parties and I could (but won't...) name the chapters who were guilty of it year in and year out.

If those chapters had cut their 3rd and 4th round lists to something more realistic and appropriate, the trickle down effect could have helped not only our struggling chapter, but also some of those middle chapters too. With each chapter inviting back as many girls as they wanted, it allowed more PNMs to drop that struggling chapter from their return list. However, when those 3 groups then dropped the axe after 3rd round many girls were left with just 1-2 chapters for pref. OR they preffed one/some of those chapters and got their 3rd choice.

We had 3 chapters close in just over 10 years from the early 80s to 1992. Since RFM there hasn't been a chapter close on my campus and all groups consistently make quota. (or very close to it).

In the bad old days, PreRFM not as many women dropped out because they still had the chapters they wanted early on. They would still have their top choices to prefs - and just get cross-cut and no bid, leaving the smaller chapter that could not make quota.

But like the rest of life, there are no absolute, 100%, locked in guarantees. Things can and do happen.

RFM is a wonderful stabilizer for new groups as well as older, formerly struggling chapters at schools. New groups often risked becoming the small chapter because of being the "unknown" in the past. I think there would be far more trepidation colonizing at large, expensive schools without the comfort of knowing that there may be new member class parity with formal recruitment.

This was not my experience as either a rushee or an active during bad old days (pre-RFM) at Bama. Strong chapters did not invite a throng of girls to pref that they had no interest in, as they had plenty to fill their living rooms who they were interested in pledging. And since so many PNMs think they want the same strong chapters as their "top choices," it would have been impossible for all these PNMs to be accommodated by a handful of chapters throughout the week and through pref. Girls were released from strong chapters every single night.

Perhaps we are referring to different bad old days -- which bad old days were you there when this was a common practice?

This sounds a lot like tent-talk folklore, since the available stats prior to implementation of RFM at Bama (2005) do not support your statements (see especially "Matched to First Choice" and "Not Receiving Bids" rows, pre-RFM years 2001-2004, compared to post RFM years 2005-2011) here.