A couple of folks have asked what happens if two groups are willing to snap bid the same girl. On our campus snap bids were generally phone calls from the Greek life office. (We also called offering bids to girls, usually those who dropped out, in the day or two after pref, snaps, but I guess they weren't truly.) I do know one girl who got a call from Greek life saying that ABC and DEF were offering her bids; which one would she prefer?

Which seems odd to me ... it's a little psychologically different than having to rank the groups in your mind before you know how much they want you, which is how formal usually works.

Well, it makes sense in that you allow the PNM to make the choice - so it is more like accepting/decling invitations to pref than filling out your bid card.

I wish UGA would do this... with so many houses potentially snapping it would be hard to say yes to DEF when you're really hoping to hear from ABC!

I was wondering about that. I'm not completely sure how snap bidding worked where I went to college, but I always assumed it was done via a phone call from the Greek Life office after the sororities had decided whom they wanted to snap. I think a few people have mentioned snap bidding being done by each individual chapter, i.e. the chapter itself would call the girl to offer her a snap bid, in which case she could theoretically receive multiple calls. But I wonder, does she have to give an answer right away if that's how her campus does it? What if, say, DEF calls her to offer a snap bid and she'd be willing to take it if ABC (her first choice) doesn't offer her one? It would suck if she said yes, thinking that a bid to DEF is preferable to no bid at all, and then ABC called.

Well, she hasn't signed anything with DEF yet... so I guess some girls might not see that "yes" as binding.

Well, yeah...but wouldn't that seem kind of...rude? I don't know. It just seems like a catch-22--if she says, "Can I think about it?" then DEF will probably guess that she's hoping for another bid, but if she accepts DEF and then ditches them for ABC, I can see some hurt feelings.

There was a girl in my pledge class whom everyone said was a snap bid. I always wanted to ask her about it because I was curious as to how the whole thing worked, but I was too afraid because I didn't want to bring it up if it was something she didn't want to talk about.

this is all so confusing!

i think i need a flow chart.

This is why all chapters should submit a potential snap bid list to the Greek Life office so that, prior or during regular bid distribution, calls can be made to those women who are being offered snap bids. One purpose of snap bidding is to offer bids prior to the COB time frame so that there is no difference seen or known between the members in the chapter (new and active).

I've always felt it best (and the advisors on my campus have always agreed) that all snap bids lists are given to the GA, then he/she makes the call; so if ABC and DEF are both offering a bid to a PNM, she gets to make the choice. It doesn't happen often on my campus that more than one chapter offers a snap bid, but it prevents the scenario where ABC calls a PNM, she takes the bid, the DEF calls later.

All of our actual snaps were done by the disaffiliated Panhel/ Greek Life people. Then if we had any other bids we wanted to offer we did that ourselves and they were technically CR bids.

I think.

Like texas*princess said, a flow chart would make it much simpler.

would it be safe to say that different schools handle snaps differently?

my personal participation in FR was limited to decorating, singing, chatting & preffing pnms. i never did anything like bid matching or never saw that side of the recruitment process so i can't say how it was done at my school, but it sounds like different schools do things differently on these past few pages?

I think a lot of the confusion comes down to what each campus/chapter called snap bids.

The official snap bids are the ones that Panhellenic calls. If a PNM doesn't match with those on their bid card, but another chapter that is not at quota is offering a bid, then the PNM gets a call from Panhellenic offering a bid to ABC instead. Some accept and some don't, but the chapters are none the wiser unless the PNM brings it up later. Generally those would be people the chapter already had in one way or another on a bid list given to Panhellenic.

If bids were handed out at 4pm and chapters were allowed to start making calls at 4:01pm to offer bids, those were technically open rush bids. Sometimes they would be those unmatched at the end of bid matching and sometimes they would be someone the chapter already knew who was unable to go through formal recruitment. However, I remember that we always referred to the phone calls the chapter made as 'snap bids'.

They technically weren't really snap bids, but we always called them that.

Yes, this is an abuse. This is the type of thing that hurts the smaller chapters, and should be totally against the rules, IMO.

In most cases, I think you would just try to get those girls to pledge in the spring.

Our chapter doesn't do snap bids, persay..but we do have 3 COR's scheduled between the end of recruitment and the first new member meeting. So..I'm imagining it'll be the same thing. Girls who don't get bids can come and we can give them a bid before NM meetings start.

Well, on some campuses, there's a little stigma to doing spring rush so you might rather figure out a way to have one super big new member class in the fall.