i believe that in the event that a pnm is matchless with all three of her pref. card rankings and would then be eligible as a quota addition, techinically first dibs on her is supposed to go to the smaller of the three chapters that she visited for prefs and ranked on her pref. card.

From the NPC Manual of Information (aka "The Green Book"), page MR-57:

The woman will be matched to the fraternity chapter she has listed on her Membership Recruitment Acceptance Agreement [B]that is smallest in chapter size, as long as her name appears on that chapter's preferential bid list, [B] and that by matching her that group does not exceed Quota by more than 5 percent.


So as you can see, the purpose is first to place the woman in a group of her choosing and then to be sensitive to chapter size.

From the NPC Manual of Information (aka "The Green Book"), page MR-57:

The woman will be matched to the fraternity chapter she has listed on her Membership Recruitment Acceptance Agreement that is smallest in chapter size, as long as her name appears on that chapter's preferential bid list, and that by matching her that group does not exceed Quota by more than 5 percent.


So as you can see, the purpose is first to place the woman in a group of her choosing and then to be sensitive to chapter size.

That doesn't seem "fair"....because if a pnm "maximizes" her bids even though she feels strongly that she is not a fit to her #3 or even her #2 this still limits her chances of getting her #1 if her #1 is doing QA's I would think. does that make sense???

Even though there are "many stories" of girls who couldn't be happier with where they wound up as they "look back" there are those girls who are not "shallow" in their own personal assessments and just trying to get into the so called campus "best" house, but rather are good at interviewing and reading people and know that they wouldn't "fit" there. (after all the pnm was cut by the other houses she listed as a fit - so she didn't tecnhically bring her prefs down to only 1) This process has the "system" as being "taken care of" instead of the girl and let's try to "improve XYZ" by pushing her there any way we can because she has lot's to offer! And, unfortunately for the pnm who "has lots to offer" (other than A+ looks and top social connections) is typically a good-hearted soul and maximizes her bids because it is the "right thing to do" meaning that she didn't do like others she saw and "kill her interviews" at the parties if she didn't want to be "there"....

I think from all that I have been hearing and been told outright in PM and from girls who have been "placed" in houses of 2nd and 3rd choices just because they maximized their bids -- these girls are not truly happy. Yes, they should give it time, have an open mind and all -- but I'm not so sure I don't agree with considering the "suicide" option....At least doing it that way the pnm knows it's an all or nothing and if it's a nothing can move on to classes with an open, clear head and try again next year instead of being consumed with "trying to make it work".

I know that this is a diversion from my previous posts and I certainly don't want anyone to assume that I am "speaking" for my D as I have spoken to many moms and girls about their placements and this is how "I" feel in my assessment remembering that I'm not greek.

where do you find "the green book"?

The "green book" is the NPC Recruitment "how to" book for sorority chapter recruitment chairs, recruitment advisors and Panhellenic officers, advisors etc. It's not something available to the general public. The info in there includes guidelines on how to run a Panhellenic recruitment ...balancing fairness to the PNMs and fairness to the chapters. Keep in mind that different people can read the same guidelines and have different interpretations of what the guidelines mean and how to implement them.

The Panhellenic advisor at your campus should be able to answer any and all questions you have about bid matching and options available to women still interested in pledging at your specific school.

CluelessUGAmom,

I understand that from your perspective, you want your daughter matched to her top group. But much of the process is designed to level the playing field for the groups and to some degree for the PNMs.

The ideal recruitment would leave each group at campus with the same sized pledge class, and if possible every girls with her first choice. But it's completely against every girl at her first choice if it will create wild differences in size among the groups.

The point of quota additions is to offer girls who maximize their chances another shot at being placed. Maximizing her options isn't just being willing to list them all and take a bid from one or two: it means she was open to all the groups. If a PNM isn't really willing to be at a particular chapter, she shouldn't list them on her bid list. To list with no intention or desire to join isn't really maximizing options. It kind of violates the idea.

But where a PNM gets placed is also again, about equalizing size among the groups.

Basically, it kind of seems to me that you want her to have her cake and eat it too. Get the benefits of Quota Additions, but also not really have to worry about being placed at any but her favorite group. That's not how it works.

ETA: You are correct in your claim that the structure of recruitment benefits the groups. The NPC has worked hard to develop a system and procedures allowing the maximum number of groups to succeed at any given campus. Sometimes I wonder if it's too much and that we'd be better being more like the IFC groups. But honestly, when you look at the number of girls, at the recruitments who disclose the information, who do get their first preference choice as their group, it really does work well. Girls matched to choice two or three are really in the minority.

I can definitely see where you are coming from on this one. I always thought that way as well. However, now that campuses are implementing the new RFM, we are achieving greater parity amongst the chapters - meaning more of them are pledging quota, and the ones who miss are much closer than they have been in the past. QAs are rarely more than a few, 1-4 per chapter in a large system. Exceptions are made based on chapter size - meaning chapters who started out in recruitment with numbers on the lower end might receive more QAs to bring them closer to the average size. And the RFM process funnels PNMs their way anyway. If the chapter is doing a good job recruiting, having meaningful conversations with their PNMs, and showing enthusiasm about the recruitment process, PNMs will find them desirable and want to join.

When you make the suggestion that PNMs who are placed as QAs to strong chapters would have otherwise considered COB with weak chapters, I think that would only encompass a few women. Just as some women want to suicide because they would never want to be part of another group, they would never accept a COB invitation. So then we have to decide what is more important - the smallest chapter COB'ing one or two more people who mismatched; or placing 10 mismatches as QAs in larger chapters and increasing the size of the Greek system and making 10 women happy and excited to be part of it.

I think this is a point worth emphasizing. I haven't read all of the stories from AU and UGA, so I don't know if there is a rash of GC PNMs who are getting their second or third choices. If so, they are definitely in the minority. By far.

But doesn't a large number of QA's also indicate that somewhere in the the statistical end of recruitment, there are several chapters (maybe most of them) that simply kept inviting too many women to their parties (even if it was only by say 4-5?) and when they ended up having a better recruitment than they expected, these women sort of piled up and became the "mismatched." ????

I think that what you said is what I am trying to express. But if a girl suicides then she cannot be part of COB -- right??? But really maybe one of the chapters that will be offering COB may have cut her earlier and it could be a better fit for the pnm then #2 or #3 which is why she suicided....so why wouldnt' they allow her to COB? It would still have to be mutual acceptance?

Because you don't have that scenario in every suicide situation.

Perhaps the majority of times, It's the thing of "I only want to be in XX" and to #$^^ with everyone else. She was given a chance to max her options; she didn't play by the rules so she got burned.

Here's the UGA stats

Number Of Recruits Receiving :
Preference No.
No Pref 10
1 choice 822
2 choice 93
3 choice 15





And before you ask-- i don't know what "no pref" means. Maybe they dropped out going into pref round??

I think the no pref might be the number of girls who maximized but didn't get placed as QAs.

ETA: Or I guess it could reflect snaps to girls who didn't attend prefs, since it's the list of girls matching. They matched to no one they preffed.

If she doesn't list them on the pref cards (ISP, suiciding, not maximizing), as I understand it, she can still COB.

She just can't be a quota addition at the time of bid matching.

It might, but I don't think we're talking about very many PNMs compared with the total pool.

I wouldn't think you could get it too much lower than 4 or 5 girls "extra" when you are talking about over a hundred girls at each house even for prefs without creating an equally large group of pnms who were released from the process entirely. A cut here from one group leads to a cut there for different group because that pnm because available to a different group. At the bottom of that chain is a release.

Ok. But why would someone who ISP not be able to be a QA? What if they were the "next" on the list?

Because she didn't maximize her options.

If she only lists one, she has to be on the regular bid matching list. Remember if the group really wanted her to be in their new member class, they could place her number one on their list. If she's on the second or third list, they want her, but she's extra if they get their first choices.

She CAN'T be a quota addition if she ISP because by the very definition of who gets them, she wouldn't have maximized her options. The big risk of ISPing is that you limit yourself to only getting one group through regular bid matching. It should only be used by girls who know they want that one choice or nothing.

Again, I understand that from your perpective, it seems like a system that matched everyone to her first choice is desirable, but that's not how the system works. NPC policies are designed to keep the groups relatively the same size.

If all a girl had to do was get to prefs, and then she was guaranteed a bid to her first choice even if she only listed them, it would be a big problem in terms of some groups tripling in size while others got few new members. It would throw the idea of quota out the window.

Anyone have any information on the actual number of girls who registered for Rush at UGA?

First day, before it began, was 1296

The Green Book
 

If it has not already been posted, here is the link to the Green Book that someone asked to see...

http://www.uga.edu/panhellenic/Libra...ter%202007.pdf

MamaDawg, you've got the Pointer linked, which is a really helpful reference, but I think they wanted the National Panhellenic Conference handbook that's called the green book.

This is where the concept of Quota Range comes into play. Under the old matching methods, quota was set usually by the number of women attending the round before preference OR the number of women receiving preference invitations. And it rarely changed. Now that we use Quota Range, we can run quota at several different numbers and see which one achieves the greatest parity. Oftentimes that makes quota on the lower end of the range. That leaves more women unmatched. So they wind up as QAs. But the tradeoff is that more chapters make quota with women who get their first choice.

And you make a point about chapters doing better than expected. That always happens - and that's good! We want chapters to improve their operations. If the campus uses priority ranking rather than accept/regret, those situations can usually be addressed with flex lists.

The bottom line is that while there may still be quota additions, weaker chapters are pledging quota or very close.

That is correct. As I learned earlier in this thread, some campuses have additional rules about snap bidding (UGA doesn't allow dropouts to be snapped), but NPC doesn't make a distinction about that.

As long as a woman does not match to a chapter she lists on her pref card, she is eligible for COB. If she accepts a bid to a chapter via COB, she will sign a bid with the Greek office. That is the same as signing a pref card, and if she drops out prior to initiation, she must wait a year to join another sorority - same as if she matched during formal recruitment.

I think QA could be a huge problem where PNMs attending Pref overlap the same 4-5 chapters. Those chapters would continue to pick extra girls year after year and other chapters would be shut out.

I can see how this could be an issue, but as long as they were prioritized by chapter size, it seems unlikely to happen.

If you go with the PNMs order of choices only, then you are right, though.

My concern would be the same group of chapters would all ready be the big ones on campus. QA would just place a PNM first with the smallest of the biggest chapters.

It might happen occasionally, but I think that it's fairly uncommon for a girl at UGA to pref three of the very largest groups, but I may be wrong. (Here's a link to the grade reports that have membership numbers on them: http://www.uga.edu/panhellenic/academics.html. Although there is a lot of variation in numbers, most of the biggest groups don't seem to get the QAs, or many of them.

But even so, is it better than she not be placed?

I think we all like to think that she would take a COB to a smaller chapter, but this year, I think only two groups will be eligible to COB in the fall, and unless they raise total or a lot of girls graduate mid-year, there may not be that many additional groups in the spring.

Does anyone know which groups are doing COB in the Fall? If any? I would love to hear that girls who didn't find a home might have a chance to take another look at the sororities doing COB...

I am thinking of schools beyond UGA. I'm sure there are many schools where it could happen.

I suppose it could if the number of quota additions went unchecked, but if the problem emerged then they could go back to a hard cap on the number of quota additions.

At the schools where you can look at the data, the number of girls who maximize who don't get matched seems so small relative to the total numbers that it would be better for the system and the girls overall just to place them. Or at least try it for a while to see how it goes.

But you are right, other campuses might be really different. What has your knowledge/experience been like with them?

Any house that did not pledge to quota is eligible to COB. That doesn't mean they will. Some opt not to.

Do you mean any house that did not reach "total", not quota. You can reach quota and still COB if you are not at "Total"

I just saw the part of Hollywin's post that addressed that girls dropping from recruitment weren't told about not being eligible for snap bids.

If the 10 girls matched "no pref" on the stats we saw earlier do in fact refer to girls who were snap bidded, it wasn't a lot to really miss out on, statistically anyway.

I have to admit that I'm even more confused about how snap bids are issued at UGA. If you can't give snap bids to girls who dropped out, you have to give them only to girls that your previously cut, which seems super-weird. You'd invite a girl to membership who you didn't even want to come to third round?

Are we sure the "drop outs can't get snap bids" thing at UGA is correct?

But at UGA this year, that distinction, while completely true, is not really an issue. The only groups that are likely under total are those who did not pledge to quota.

The other groups who picked up between 56-64 members are almost certainly at or over total if you look at where the groups were last spring.

ETA: sorry if this sound hostile. I think think I've had too much caffeine and thought about recruitment numbers a little too much today.

There's a third category -- girls who cut your group and then didn't match. Suppose you are House X, a solid but not elite group. House X invited Susie PNM to pref, but she regretted the pref because she was also invited by superstar groups A, B, and C. Susie PNM ranks all 3 superstars on her bid card, but she's at the bottom of the third bid list at all three of them, and ends up bidless. House X offers a snap bid to Susie, since it wanted to have her at pref anyway. Susie says yes because she liked House X okay, just less than she liked A, B, and C.

This scenario times 10 = 10 pref-less snap bids. Not hard to imagine at a campus that big.
________
properties Pattaya

You're right, and I had completely forgotten about that category of PNM. In addition to it happening after pref, I bet it could happen to a girl who might have cut groups after first, but not make it to prefs with other groups.

(It's always a little hard for me to imagine how it happens because so many more girls drop out than get cut and most girls who pref three will match to one.)

I'm not sure why people are saying you can't give snap bids to girls who dropped out. Is this just a UGA rule? I know at my campus the girls who got snap bids were almost 100% of the time girls who dropped out before pref. Either they wouldn't get the invites they wanted or would just decided they had enough with rush, but either way I can't remember a time when any chapter gave a snap bid to a girl that they had cut! That just seems strange. Every chapter would get a list of girls who had withdrawn just in case we didn't make quota and wanted to give a snap bid to them.

VENT VENT VENT!
 

At last I can post! My registration request never reached my work email so I couldn't post last week as I read all the entries and replies Wow, what a difference almost thirty years makes.

Now to the pent up vent. What has happened to courtesy during rush? I wrote a rec for a girl who was outstanding academically, was captain of a varsity team and 4 year team member, greek family, cute, great wardrobe, no tats or piercings, blah blah blah, and she was cut after first round by my sorority. Are there so many girls going through rush now that sororities have their favorites picked out before rush begins? I wonder now if I should have sent her rec in the Spring.

Had a very different experience with a rec I sent to MSU (which is smaller, granted). Sent the rec, had a nice postcard from the reference chairman saying it had been received, and they would extend her every courtesy. She actually got a bid from them. Snaps to their system, and advisors.

If alum advisors are reading this, this experience makes me wonder why I bother to write references at all. The other girls I have sent them in for all pledged other sororities but I assumed it was because they didn't want mine. From this girl, who is a friend, I find out she was cut after first round? How many times has this happened before? My sorority was good at Georgia, but when I was there we would never have had the luxury of cutting a girl like this unless she had a QR (you old timers know that phrase, I don't think there's any such thing now) and this girl did not have a bad reputation.

If chapters want alums to respond when they send requests for financial support they should extend the courtesy of keeping us in the loop of chapter activities like rush. No contact about if they received my rec, who was pledged, who was a legacy, anything. And this in the day of email.

I warned you in the title this was a vent and I'm sorry to be so negative but I'm irritated and disappointed with what this girl has experienced and the longing she has to "belong" when her other friends are going off on sorority weekends and wearing their sorority gear and she is left out. What a great way to start your freshman year of college.

I think Georgia should do what many other schools have done and put rush off till Winter Semester so these rushees have their feet on the ground before experiencing the rejection of rush.