If only invited to two chapters for pref and she goes to those two chapters for pref AND places both of them on her bid card then she is eligible for guaranteed placement. If she only went to one (if that was allowed) or if she only put one on her bid card then she did not maximize b/c she had two options.

Guaranteed placement only favors those chapters that make quota, so in some instances it could be a case of the big getting bigger. That's how it was at UT. If there is a smaller group that never makes quota - they will never get guaranteed placement. If there was still someone to guarantee place then the smaller group would have had them put on their bid list already.

It does not force them to join a group they do not want - because they should only put down chapters that they attend that they would accept a bid from. If they would accept from any on their card it wouldn't be an issue. Of course we all know that's a perfect world - not the "rush" world where Suzie Rushee has her heart set on XYZ before recruitment events get started!

Carnation makes a good point as well. The new release figure system is allowing more chapters to make quota - some as she said that haven't been there in years.

I haven't looked at UT's numbers since they implemented the new release figure method (RFM) - but I know that it has helped some chapters on that campus. As with anything - all chapters won't improve (i.e. make quota) overnight. But, it the new RFM at least gives them the chance.

At some campuses you can still regret with interest. I don't know if this is compatable with the RFM. I do know that reinviting a woman that declined your invite to a prior round (even if she was regret with interest) doesn't really work and that it messes up the statistics used.

Can you tell me more about this?

Let's imagine a system with first, second, third and prefs. Let's say a PNM receives invites to second round from 10 groups but at her campus, during second round you can only go to eight parties. Let's imagine that she likes almost all the groups, but she has to cut some. Now, imagine that after second round, she's not invited back to the maximum number of parties (let's say four) and she only gets invited back to three. Why would it not work for her to be able to be reinvited by one of the groups that she liked and that liked her if they wanted her to attend? It seems like it would be good all the way around.

I know that there are groups that PNM cut because they know they don't want bids, but if the PNM is still interested once she's cut by other groups and the group is still interested, what's the harm?

I want to stress that I don't think that girls should ever be matched to groups that they haven't indicated they'd take bids from. But why not allow people to keep all their options as long as both parties are interested?

This seems as a problem at some schools?

God, it may be easier to tell them all to forget it?:( Who needs this?:o

If they are not good enough then they are not.

But if they are, well, why put a YOUNG FEMALE through all of the pressure?:(

They can and will be accepted, yes?

I think that if a group has an open space that they can invite and still like
(or haven't found sufficient enough reason to totally cut), why not give her a chance. They might end up liking her more than someone they thought they liked better.;)

Of course, inviting to Pref is an entirely different bowl of cherries.

Remember, it's in a perfect world that the women that the chapter reinvites are ones that actually have open spaces. Also, a lot of PNM's put down regret with interest b/c they know (through the recruitment grape vine) that chapters see this and it looks better to regret with interest than to just regret. So, they may not really want to go back to the chapter. Of course then you have to factor in all the upset that they have that they didn't get invited back to enough chapters to go to one of their top choices.

All that being said, what usually happens when chapters reinvited (forget the regret with interest part) is that the majority don't come back because they already have a full event schedule (remember this is an accept/regret campus NOT priority). So they see that ABC reinvited them, but they got invites from enough of the chapters they went to prior round to not HAVE to go to ABC unless they want to. The majority don't pick to go back to ABC. What this does to the RFM is basically screw up the return rates for the round in question. This, in turn, can mess with the number the chapter is allowed to invite back for th next round and messes up the stats for the next year.

Take this scenario:

100 - Number of women in recruitment
80 - Number of women ABC has in their pool (meaning the number that came to their last event)
80 - Number of women ABC can invite to the next round

The chapter is not going to be allowed to invite back any more than is in their pool. So, if they want to reinvite, they are release women that actually attended their last event. Their working against the odds with the reinvites.

So say they do this:

70 - Number of women they invite that attend the last event
10 - Number of women they reinvite (with interest women)

If their historical return (which the RFM Specialist has when giving them the number to reinvite or carry) is 75% then they would have about 53 of the 70 come back. The return for reinvites is going to be much lower than this - say 25% so of the other 10 they might get 3 vs. a possible 8 with their historical figure.

So, yes, they might get a few through reinvites. What this also does is make their return rate look lower. They invited 80 and got 56 but they should have had 61. Remember, that's if they even get any of the reinvites. They could get none. So then it looks like they are doing worse than they actually are.

Priority works this differently. With priority the women rank a first choice cluster (if they can go to 8 then 8 are ranked as #1) and the rest in acutal rank order. They do not rank chapters they did not acutally attend - so reinvites won't work at all and again throw off the number for the RFM Specialist.

Sorry for the reallllly long post, but it's hard to explain any shorter! :)

TxGirl - I find that very interesting! UF didn't have regret with interest when I went through, so I've only recently been introduced to the idea, and I'd never really thought about what it would do to return rates. Thanks for sharing. :)

Thanks for that long explanation. I'm sorry I didn't see it before now.

My experience with rush is from before release figures (or at least before there were rewards for actually following them), so I still had in my mind the idea of a group being able to reinvite as many girls as they wanted to. I wasn't really considering the idea that a reinvite replaced an guest who actually attended the previous round.

I was thinking that reinvites might be a way for a chapter with lower return rates to pick back up girls who might be more interested in that particular chapter after being released by their early favorites after second round.

When I went through rush we could only "regret with interest"-which was annoying b/c if you wanted to cut one of the smaller chapters you really couldn't-their names would always show up on your list the next day and again you would have to pick "regret with interest." This did not help out the smaller chapters at all.

So you all couldn't cut groups at all? Did you all just rank houses and go back to all of them for the next round?

Or are you saying that if you didn't get the max number of invites back from your top picks, the "regret with interest" houses would show up again to fill in the rest of your parties when you really would have preferred not to go to a party than to go back to them?

Edit: or a third option came to me: you mean it was annoying to put down regret with interest on your rankings each round for the houses you weren't going back to? Simply writing it was annoying?

For the folks who know where they want to go and are actually going to be on the first bid list, I think showing up as guests at other houses and being nice and interested (or seeming to like houses that you want to cut) ultimately helps the PR of the house you end up in. Other girls will kind of say, "ah, Aggie, went AXO; she's a super girl; how awesome for them." And for everybody else, who might be in suspense about where they will end up, it keeps more options open.

But no one should get a bid from a house that they didn't pref and list on the bid card. That goes way beyond keeping options open.

Regretting with interest means that you want to go there, but can't fit them in. If you can't actually cut and can only RWI then when you get cut by the larger houses, you'll keep getting invited back to the smaller ones, and then keep RWI-ing them. So annoying on the PNM's side because she keeps going to houses that she isn't so interested in and RWI's them each time. Annoying for the small houses that have full parties but may not take quota because those women all want to go somewhere else.

Well, it seems to me that the small houses are probably better off having full houses for the parties than having empty ones. In my mind, they aren't more likely to make quota with fewer girls at each party; they'd be even less likely to make it. So, it may not be a big hardship for them to have girls who aren't crazy about being there at a few parties.

From the PNM's perspective, you might have to go to a few houses you aren't interested in, but how big a deal is that really? You meet some girls; you dazzle them with your charm; they know your future chapter got a great girl on bid day. At least, that's how it goes at UGA, in my opinion.

Yes, occasionally smaller chapters do believe that some girls who aren't really interested want to join them because the PNMs are such awesome guests and treat each rusher like she is the most interesting and charming person on the planet. But it's usually pretty clear by prefs who you will really see on bid day.

If a PNM's only option in declining is to regret with interest, I can see that you couldn't use it to determine if people were interested. If I'm remembering this correctly, back when I was in school and we were huddled around checking our party lists by firelight in the cave, you could straight up decline/regret, decline with interest, or accept.

When I asked about re-invites, I had in mind a system that allowed a PNM to make a distinction between a group she liked okay but wasn't in her top group for second round and a group she never wanted to see again.

With groups making their big releases maybe between different rounds, I can see that a girl who got invited back almost every place after first, but cut hard after second, might not mind having a full party schedule for third. But I can see from the very detailed answer why that doesn't work out in the long term. (Thanks again, TXgirl!)

My school had 5 chapters, none of which I would consider small vs. big though there was a range. PNMs there don't cut, they rank.

From the small chapters perspective it's hard to get a feel for how your return rates are (and how you'll do for quota) if you're getting predominantly PNMs who were dropped by other chapters. I don't know that there's really any way to solve that problem though.

As for the PNM's perspective, that's why it's an annoyance. It's not a big deal, but it's still annoying to list XYZ as a regret, yet still go see them every night.

Ideally, it might make a PNM reconsider the smaller houses, but if they still have their top three, they're probably not looking at their bottom two as viable options.

On one hand, maybe someone will show up who hadn't considered your sorority and be won over. But on the other hand, maybe the majority of the people at the party will be people who'd just as soon be there as have root canal, and aren't shy about showing it. You as a member of that sorority who's already stressed about being smaller, have to keep talking OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN to someone you know doesn't want to be there and doesn't like you. It's very draining for the sorority members. Think about in everyday life how annoying it is to put up w/ someone at your job who you know doesn't like you. Now transfer that to rush which is about 10,000 times more stressful.

And while I think do think it's good to "keep trying," I wouldn't want someone who feels so negatively about my sorority at pref. That's supposed to be a special evening and I'd hate to have a bunch of girls with bad vibes ruining things for the rushees who DO want to be there.