OK...I am going to try to answers all of the questions I have seen so far. Wish me luck, as I will try not to overlook anything.

1. There are three unhoused chapters. There is NO campus total (another oddity at IU). You have chapters who come back in the fall with 130 women and chapters who come back with 180 women in the fall. There in lies the average total of 157. The three unhoused chapters decide their own quota, a member of one of those groups told me that they make quota to keep them at average chapter size which what their national organization requires since there is no campus total. Sigma Kappa will re-colonize its Tau chapter in Jan. of 2016 and it will be the 23 NPC chapter on campus.

2. The placement rate at IU includes those women who were dropped for grades, so if you take those women out the placement rate jumps to the low 70s, still not great, but much higher than half. Back in 2009, there were only 19 chapters on campus. Now there are 22. Also, in that year, several of the chapters took smaller pledge classes due to a large number taken the year before.

3. The IU Panhellenic requires a 2.6 to go through recruitment, however I had heard that it was being raised to 2.7. Some chapters require a 3.0 or close to it for membership without being a "connected" or "VIP" PNM. The year I went through, a top chapter was on academic probation with their national org. and could not bid anyone less than 3.0. They were very up front about it, thankfully.

4. More chapters are easing their senior live-in requirement. An older established chapter allowed seniors the option to live out for next year and only 8 women chose to do so.

5. I do not understand why the national organizations have not stepped in because of the missing revenue alone. A chapter took 35 last year, we figured quota at 74 if IU used quota-total. So therefore one chapter alone missed out on almost 40 X the new members fees, initiation fees, and future alumnae donations. Not chump change.

I am sure I missed something, but hopefully this answers a few of the questions in the thread so far.

Because having the chapter go under due to going against campus norms would result in even more missing revenue. Plus, according to most of the IU posters here, retention is better than at other similar schools. You don't need as large of pledge classes if your retention for 2011's pledge class is 80% as opposed to Big Honkin U who only retained 60% of the same year's class. Perhaps this is a case of that which is the most difficult to attain is more valued.

Obvi this is a very rosy view. :)

But as Titchou said this is not something that can happen overnight. If ythey started tomorrow to make steps to a full quota/total system, I'd say a 2020 complete implementation date would be optimistic.

In reply to the question regarding Indiana's grade requirements, they do not appear to be any stricter then other universities. I appreciate knowing that placement jumps to 71% when women released due to academics is placed into the information.

IndianaSigKap- what percent of women drop out of recruitment because they do not like the options of chapters that they are invited back to?

From the IU recruitment page:

http://iupharecruitment.com/parents.html

2.8 GPA minimum or higher

I do not know the average GPA at Indiana. I know that law school admissions put in a tremendous effort to compare a 3.0 at School A to a 3.5 at School B.

Maman says another plus for deferred recruitment to put the PNMs on a level playing field for grades.

From the page cited above:

"2014
• 1,905 women registered
• 1,319 women participated in bid matching
• 1,002 received bids
• 317 women not matched in process
2013
• 1,735 women registered
• 1,160 participated in bid matching
• 1,025 received bids
• 146 women not matched in process
2012
• 1,720 women registered
• 1,086 participated in bid matching
• 890 received bids
• 252 women were not matched throughout the process"

Thank you Titchou for your thoughtful post. Expansion is not that simple. It is not the same as Thanksgiving dinner where you can always squeeze in a few more people.

Finally. Hallelujah! I don't know any sister, cousin, or friend of a friend going through recruitment at Indiana this year.

Keep in mind that these women register for recruitment in the fall BEFORE they have grades. Recruitment is after grades come out. So many who initially signed up probably wouldn't if they had to wait till they have grades to register.

I wonder how many young women who really want to join a sorority don't even apply to IU because of this unusual recruitment situation. It sounds like so many qualified and wonderful young women are excluded from sorority life.

Maybe out of state students have enough knowledge about the Greek system to make this type of informed decision, but I don't imagine a ton of in state girls think about this when deciding to go to IU. The greek system is only about 23% of the student body.

^^^not enough for the IU administration to force them into changing it, obviously. And there's also the possibility that those aren't the students IU wants, anyway.

Problem is, they've just about run out of sororities.

This is true for the majority of in-state students because I did not know anything about sorority recruitment (which is my own fault, I should have done research if it was important to me) at IU when choosing to go there. If I had, I might have picked a different college.

Also another sorority (Sigma Kappa) is going to colonize in 2016 so that will help a little with numbers. From talking to friends in sororities, they all want the system to change, but don't know what they can do about it.

No, but Indiana is pretty unusual in that it's a (1) big, competitive recruitment (2) that is deferred (3) at a school that's fairly easy to get into (about 74% admit rate).

At the handful of other schools with big, competitive deferred recruitments -- Duke, Vandy, and UVA come to mind-- the school is so selective that every student comes in well prepared, and freshman fall grades don't disqualify many women. Ditto Penn, Cornell, etc. In other words, the academic requirements may not be any higher, but they may have a lot more teeth than at an elite school where virtually everyone is above a 3.0 after fall semester.

Indiana may actually be by itself in this category. Are there any other big deferred recruitments at schools that are NOT academic elites? Maybe SMU or Maryland, but they are still a lot more selective than IU.

Baylor comes to mind, but it is likely not comparable to IU in this situation. SMU certainly would not be in the same category as IU.

I would put SMU in the "elite enough" category. They are certainly no Ivy, but their admissions standards are high enough that students have the academic background to be successful in college. Those that don't make recruitment minimums would more than likely fall into the "I spent way too much time partying and not studying" camp.

Even though Baylor's admission standards are lower than SMU, I do think the overwhelming majority of PNMs do make their grades. I've never seen actual statistics, but knowing plenty of women are are/have been Greek at Baylor there just has not been much talk of PNMs not being able to rush due to grades.

Ohio State.

Miami of Ohio...others will argue with me that it is elite, but i disagree.