Thank you, ladies, I can see this may be an uphill battle but hopefully not impossible. I feel for her because I can imagine that it's tough for the new kid (and a HS senior) to approach people you've just met or hardly know and ask questions that might seem sorta pushy or nosy in order to get a personal reference....she'll just have to get out her comfort zone and do it if this is important to her! All part of the learning process I suppose.

bejazd, tell her to start with her new friends' moms, they should be the least intimidating. After she's got "her legs under her", she can move on to teachers, etc.

The thing is, most of the women she will be approaching have been there before, or have worked with girls who have, so they will only be wanting the best for her, and will be happy to do what they can to help with recruitment. I honestly have never run across anyone who said, "nope, can't help her." when I've called someone on behalf of a girl I've known. I've never turned a girl down who needed a rec - even when I've been at my busiest.

Good luck to her!!!

bejazed have her ask the people who are writing you recs if they know anyone else. I remember my daughtr asking someone and then another person over hearing and saying I will write you a rec too. Tehn she found out they didn't have they chapter at her school be she proceed to tell her 3 other people who could write her rec.

I've lived in Texas my entire life and have visited every part of the state and have never heard of anyone not refer to the University of Texas as "Texas" or "UT". We are the only UT. If you go to UT-Arlington, you don't say "I go to UT".

Hook 'Em.

Co-sign. Except that I did not attend UT, and I now live in another state. However, even at my non-UT school everyone refers to the school in Austin as UT or Texas.

Ep- a word of caution... it appears that you are still in school... as you begin the resume/interview process, you *really* need to refer to the school that you attend at UTEP and not UT. That could really cause some potential employers to raise an eyebrow.

And while we are it, the "university system" is not a concept unique to Texas- in fact, I believe that most if not all states have the same set-up. However, when athletic teams take the field, the "main" campus (e.g. Austin, Knoxville, Lincoln, Norman) has just the state name on their jerseys, whereas all the "system" schools always have the full inital thing.

I am pleased with living in the South.

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I may have missed some of the nuances of the argument, but I just wanted to try to point something out:

Even at the schools where recommendations from alumnae or alumnae groups matter a lot, the active undergraduate members still vote according to the national guidelines for membership selection, as far as I know.

So any claims of "alumnae choosing the membership" are greatly exaggerated as far as I know.

I can see why who you were in high school or in your home town might seem like a lame consideration in joining an organization in college, to me it seems a little better to at least to have a little information about that rather than to base a lifelong membership decision on the couple of conversations that you might have had during recruitment or, at the most, a semester's worth of interaction on campus if rush is delayed or deferred.

So, while I generally hope undergraduate members still use their own judgment in selecting members (my goofy feelings about legacies aside), the alumnae are really just trying to provide a benefit to the PNMs and the chapters.

As far as the photos, I know that when you are trying to place someone that you think you know by name, a photo is often really helpful. The more images you've got of a girl the more likely it is that someone is going to say, "oh, yeah, I know her; she worked with my daughter's girl scout group," or whatever. If it's the alumnae groups asking for the photos, it may not be about making sure to the shuffle out all the fat girls. In my experience, the alumnae are much more concerned about character than appearance.

I wrote a really inflammatory post and I didn't feel like dealing with whining and bitching so I edited it.

Not to sound rude or anything....but i'm not stupid.

I wish we had had this during my recruitment years...it would have helped conversations between PNMs and actives that have significant height differences. I can still see some of the photos in my mind of women who walked in the door on Open House day and no one was able to recognize them.

We used to get these huge packages with the full-length pics for the Texas girls back when I was in undergrad (can I say that?). We were happy to get them as recs are moderately common at W&L, but the Texas packets were definitely the most intense...

I can think of one girl who had a beautiful face but her full-length... Wow. I think that is a rush story I just can't tell. Although I SO WANT TO.

And yeah... UT is UT is UT is.... Texas.

I was the senior homeroom teacher at a private school in Houston. I had a white erase board with all the students' names, and I would write their college acceptances on the board. One student was accepted to UTSA, so I dutifully wrote "UTSA" by his name. He kept erasing the "SA", which irritated his fellow classmates, so finally they drew Shamu (there is a Sea World in San Antonio) by his name.

Oh, do tell. PLEASEEEEE (said in my best whining voice).:D

I agree UT is in Austin. I am from Houston and have lived in Texas all my life until I went to school in Tenn. When anyone I know says UT or Texas they are talking about the one in Austin. If they go to the UT in Dallas then it is UTD or the one it San Antonio its UTSA. I mean even those schools websites call themselves UTD and UTSA. If you are applying for a job and you put down UT please mean the one in Austin. Not that UTSA or UTD arent good schools but lets be honest UT is much harder to get accepted into then the other two I mean they defer acceptance of students to attend those other schools.