I'm not sure where you're going with this, but if you're trying to reference my earlier post about dirty rushing and saying that if a sorority is trying to get you to do things to get you as a quota addtion, instead of putting you on their first bid list, you should tell them to go jump...

I wouldn't have minded taking COB from ASA if I wasn't on their bid list, because at least they played fairly, and would have let me go somewhere else if I was on that other org's first bid list.

My point is (provided I fit with both orgs) I'd rather go to a GLO that had me 1st on their bidlist than one that snuck me in through QA or dirty rushing or where I was last on their bidlist.

I agree with this. When I was a Rho Gamma this spring, one of my friends from high school went through and she ranked two chapters and got her second choice. She was crushed; even her Rho Gamma, who was in the chapter that she wanted, thought for sure that she would get her chapter. I explained to her that there's nothing she can do at this point, especially because she was a sophomore. There was no mistake. There is no getting a bid from #1 next semester. There is no getting a bid as a junior next spring. Your only choice is to give this group a try and you can walk away at any time, so why walk away before bid day?

ETA: She ended up being very happy in her #2 choice and accepted the fact that there was more than one good fit. :)

I agree w/ this as well, but I think it's easier to say to someone who is a freshman or perhaps a sophomore who transferred in than someone who has already spent 3+ semesters on campus and perhaps has gotten her heart set on a group (which we know a PNM shouldn't do, but sometimes it's tough not to)

Additionally PNM's who go thru rush and get & accept their 2nd (or 3rd) choice should smile & shut up about it immediately. The new member class that came into my chapter my sophmore year had a group of girls (like 4 or 5) who all pref'd another house together & put it first, but ended up in our house. Their attitudes were bad in the beginning- they thought they were better than some of their NM class because they had pref'd this house- we had to break it down to them- they didn't GET that house, that house didn't WANT them enough to put them on the 1st bid list or they would be there... at one point I told them they weren't "almost in that 'other house'" and that they needed to get over themselves and that they weren't helping anyone including themselves w/ their haughty attitude- if anything they looked like sore losers.
They ended up being a good group of sisters, and one of them even went on to be president but I remember wanting to smack them for a while!

I guess I was very lucky, I think I would've been happy in any of the three houses where I preffed way back in the day. I had been on campus long enough to know everybody's reputation and a lot of girls in each chapter, and although they were all different, I think I could've found a place in any of them. Maybe this is one of the advantages of a big system--I see a much different story on a campus with only half a dozen or so chapters. Sometimes if you don't get invited back to a place where you thought you'd fit, there isn't an alternative that seems right.

Thanks BruinAPhi...you actually did answer my question about elibility to receive a bid as a quota addition with your earlier post I just didn't read it carefully enough. Please forgive!

So if you really only want to accept a bid from one house that invited you to Preference, I guess you can ISP and take your chances. But it's a really bad bet.

Rush counselors used to encourage PNMs to list any house on the Pref card from whom they were willing to accept a bid...even if they had not attended their Pref party. I have a sister who was invited to three houses at Pref, regretted AB, went to XYZ and QQQ's Pref parties, decided she wanted XYZ most, didn't want a bid from QQQ, but put down AB as a second choice on her pref card. She of course got a bid from AB, was heartbroken for about 5 minutes, then went to pledge day and spent the rest of her life happily as an AB!

and you too can live happily ever after if you choose to!!

What if there was a chapter you repeatedly tried to drop throughout recruitment that kept asking you back, all the way through pref, and that you would rather have your head cut off than join? Are you saying that she has to put them down just to cover her butt?

That kind of goes against the whole "mutual selection process" concept. It can essentially force a PNM to put down a group she doesn't want if she wants another group who will probably make quota. Then she ends up screwed with a group she doesn't want and the sorority ends up screwed with a PNM who didn't want them.

If this is what "quota additions" are, I'm glad my school never had them.

Exactly. This is why sometimes maximizing options isn't always the best choice.

I don't completely agree with this. In some smaller schools, you may still have a decent chance to join a sorority. When I was in school, a girl pledged Phi Mu (very good chapter on our campus) with a 1.9 GPA! She was a sophomore who had classes with a lot of other members. When I was a Rho Chi, my entire group were upper classmen with very low GPAs. Some were cut, but most received bids. Of course, we only had 4 groups on campus with 25-35 NM quotas. My advice is to know the system you're rushing. Big competitive schools are probably not worth it, but smaller schools may still be an option for girls with borderline grades. I do totally agree with KSUViolet when she says that you are in school to get an education, so if you can't make good grades without having all of the extracurricular activities that a sorority entails, you may want to think twice about joining!

No, a PNM should never rank a chapter at Pref if she has no desire to join that group.

Quota additions are a very good way of insuring that women who play by the rules and maximize their options throughout recruitment do not go unmatched on bid day.

I was such a dummy going through rush as a first semester freshman. When I went to a party at a house that kept inviting me back that I had no intention of pledging, and they asked me (politely of course) what houses I was interested in...or how I felt about their house...or something to that effect...I told them. The truth. Politely!

problem solved.

But the woman in my example DID play by the rules, and although she won't go "unmatched" she and the sorority will be a bad match.

Say she goes into pref with 2 groups: ABC and XYZ. The max pref parties you can go to is 3.

ABC she loves, they love her, but they always make quota and are at total and to top it off, there are a ton of ABC legacies going through recruitment. She knows they might make quota before they even get to her, so she wants to have the hope of maybe being a quota addition. No hard feelings...that's just the way it is.

XYZ she can't stand, has tried to drop them, but they keep inviting her back and in order to be considered for quota additions, she cannot decline their invites as she must "maximize her options."

She goes to pref, puts down ABC #1 and XYZ #2. ABC has exhausted their quota additions before they even get to her...so she's stuck with XYZ.

Or, she doesn't even want to entertain the thought of XYZ, so she suicides ABC. ABC makes quota from their first bid list, so they won't be COBing or snapping, and cannot add her as a quota addition so she suicided.

It sounds like a crappy deal to me any way around, and a way for the bigger sororities to get bigger.

Isn't that where the logic/principle behind the new RFM is supposed to step in? A good Panhellenic Rush Coordinator is going to look at ABC's returns before Pref invites are issued, and see the number of legacies they are carrying and look at how many spots ABC might potentially fill with legacies. Looking at ABC's historical stats she's going to have a very good idea of exactly how many women ABC should invite to pref. When it works right, a rushee who has little or no hope of actually receiving a bid from ABC is never invited to Pref in the first place.

But it is an imperfect system, and you are right...some parts of sorority rush just suck.

On an aside, do you really think that the biggest houses get bigger because of quota additions...or because they consistently make quota and retain their members?

Say a girl has two pref parties and is only interested in one.

Couldn't a girl "get sick" during the party that she is not interested in? Thus, she would only be attending an event for one house and according to the rules ("you can only rank a chapter you visited an event for") she could only rank that house.

Right? Or not right?

I'm thinking "out loud" here, trying to think of a way a girl could cheat the system.

It wasn't part of my training as a Rho Chi. Granted, I was a Rho Chi in 1994. :o But we were essentially told to discourage suiciding as much as possible - actually, we weren't even permitted to bring up the notion at all, the PNM had to specifically inquire about it.

And DeltaDeltaBaby had a very good point - I had no clue how Bid Matching really worked, even though I was a Rho Chi. It wasn't until I was on Panhellenic Exec board that I started to understand everything behind the process.