USC
 

I just wanted to wish all the PNMs and my Panhellenic sisters lots of luck, fun, and good wishes for their recruitment, which begins tomorrow.

Fight on!!

Univ. of Southern California
 

Southern California began recruitment last evening with an orientation meeting. The number announced for pnms was 850+. That number is rather large considering the freshman class at SC is around 2700. Last year there were fewer pnms registered.

Today and tomorrow are conversation days when the pnms visit all ten chapters.

Friday are house tours. (Up to 6 chapters)

Saturday is video day (Up of 4 chapters)

Sunday morning is preference (Up to 2 chapters)

Sunday evening is bid night. It will be about 8 o'clock PT.

Presents is in late October during Parents' Weekend.

Date for Presents
 

Presents at Southern California is Sunday, October 25, 2009.

Scheduled times:
AChiO 10:00
SDT 10:00
ADPi 11:00
APhi 11:00
GPhi 11:00
Theta 11:00
Tri Delta 11:30
DG 2:00
Pi Phi 2:00
Kappa 2:00

Gifts for bid night?
 

My daughter is currently going through recruitment at USC. At Texas schools it is customary for the parents to send a gift and/or flowers to their daughters to be delivered bid night. There are local companies that have gifts ready to be delivered when the bid is announced. Is there any similar custom at USC that parents should know about?

Its been A LONG TIME since I was in school, but YES many parents did do this in the days following bid day. IMO sending the next day would be the best.

Whooooaaaa....
 

This was new to me. Panhellenic at SC changed the party schedule after the first "conversation parties". Perhaps this occurred because 850+ pnms registered instead of the expected 700. There are now ten NPC groups on the row.

The original announcement called for a party schedule of six this evening. Instead pnms are attending up to 8 parties. I heard this meant pnms who received eight invitations are leaving the last party at 1:00 in the morning!

Tomorrow will be Video Day with pnms attending up to 5 parties. Preference, with up to 2 parties, will be on Sunday morning. Bid Night will be Sunday evening at about 8:00 PT.

Have any of you heard of Panhellenic changing schedules in the middle of recruitment? Original plan was 10-6-4-2. New plan is 10-8-5-2.

The USC Panhellenic booklet said that PNMs visit seven houses on Spirit Day (10-7-5-2) -- so there have either been a couple of misprints or recruitment has been restructured a couple of times since the original schedule was posted.

Is it possible that the PNMs have the same number of parties, but the sororities added more to accommodate them? That would make more sense to me than disrupting the number of chapters they visit right in the middle of recruitment.

My daughter, a current pnm at USC, said they could attend as many as 8 parties last night, 5 parties today, and 2 prefs tomorrow, so it looks like Football Fan is correct with 10-8-5-2.

Late Night
 

A friend told me her daughter attended eight parties last evening and returned home at 1:30. She will be at five parties today, have dinner.......and SLEEP.

Party Schedule
 

Today was Video Day. The original schedule was to attend parties from 11 in the morning until 6:10 in the evening. I do not know if that was followed. After the visits the pnms rank the chapters as Preference is tomorrow morning. Bid Night is Sunday evening at 8 o'clock.

This recruitment is taking place the first week of classes and ending on the weekend.

Results for Univ. of Southern California
 

This is unofficial information. Over 850 pnms were registered. A large number of pnms withdrew when the party schedule went from 5 to 2. Quota was 51. All houses made quota, except the newest chapter. One chapter had 11 quota additions. Each chapter was allowed to take two juniors which did not count towards quota.

Hm. IMO it's too much to go from 5 houses to 2 just before preference.

Large Number Withdrew
 

When over 850 are registered and not even 600 pledge it is not good for the Panhellenic system, in my opinion. I agree it would have been much better to have the schedule go from 4 to 2.

Or 5 to 3.

Oh. My. Goodness.
At least it's California. The only thing that could be harder than such a long day is doing it all in the cold. When I rushed through formal recruitment, the windchill on sisterhood day was -18* F. On philanthropy day, -36*. It's a miracle I didn't drop out due to my face freezing off. :rolleyes:

One of my friends in LA said it hit the high 90s today and they're predicting it to be triple digits tomorrow.

I still don't know which is worse...freezing cold? or scorching heat?

Numbers from the Daily Trojan .....
 

An article from the Daily Trojan has the official numbers from Panhellenic. No numbers for a particular chapter are mentioned.

Officially registered.....842
Number who accepted bids......539

This was a 7% decrease from last year.

These numbers are from an article in the DT on Sept. 1, 2009.

There are about 1350 women in the SC freshmen class.

I would SO take freezing cold.

I think 5 to 2 can work effectively, but it is a tough cut for both PNMs and the chapters. My much bigger concerns are:

- Recruitment parties going until 1am in the morning! I'm sure that a TON of women were just too exhausted from the process and didn't have the emotional resiliency to deal with the bumps in the road of recruitment

- Upperclasswomen. If I'm not mistaken, USC accepts second-semester freshmen transfers as well as traditional transfer students. The freshman transfers typically have to wait until fall of their sophomore year to go through recruitment because not all chapters have COB spots available in the spring. I'm curious how many of the women who dropped out were upperclasswomen who received heavy cuts in the later rounds.

Last year UCLA started an upperclasswoman quota that was separate from freshman quota, with the hope of more sophomores and juniors being placed. The panhellenic advisor kept seeing a high drop out rate before preference of predominantly upperclasswomen. Retention increased last year and quota went from mid-30's in 2007 to mid-40's in 2008.

So, I tried to post, but it didn't go through. My daughter just finished rush at SC. It was unbelievably exhausting, both physically and emotionally. The drop from 5 to 2, along with very vague (at least as related to us) financial information caused alot of girls to panic and drop.

Yes, she gave me permission to post her story. I'll start that later. (And, unlike so many I will finish it as well.)

Not even remotely an issue at SC even though rush can be very competitive for a non SEC chapter. Juniors have an incredibly difficult time but sophomores are treated like freshmen. Usually they are placed in chapters proportionate to their percentage in rush...even the most competitive chapters will often have 2/3 freshmen, 1/3 sophomores and their 2 "free" juniors.

Well, let's hear it for all the girls who stuck it out through the heat! What is it about rush that takes a lovely cool summer into September heat wave syndrome? Recruitment at USC can be brutal. But so worth it!!!

Today I'm doing the happy dance because my son's adorable friend went....













Gamma Phi Beta!!!!

Those cuts are so hard for the PNM's. My daughter is rushing at Wisconsin and they went 11-7-3.

Are they getting any of the smoke from the fires in SoCal?

Ohhhh yes. The smoke isn't as bad as when we have Santa Ana conditions along with the fire, but there is definitely the smell and the oddly filtered sunlight. The fires themselves have been horrible -- can't even imagine what this would look like if we had the wind to go with it.

Hooray! :D

I remember the filtered sunlight from when we had fires my first year at Pepperdine. It is really odd...not dark, yet not light. Like a sepia photograph.

The smoke is really bad. And yes, the skies are grey. I remember many years ago when the fires were closer to us and the sky was almost red. I don't know how people who must work outside are doing. It is really quite uncomfortable. But we are safe. My heart goes out to those who are in the fire area.

seriously. I had a pretty bad asthma attack at 2am. Sat here thinking do I call 911, the boyfriend (who I'd left asleep at his house 30 min prior) or tough it out. I toughed it out.

Any word on how SC's recruitment went this year? Did most houses meet their quotas? Any surprises? Thanks!

Westcoastgal,
See posts #13 and #19 above.

Thanks Football Fan. I missed seeing your previous posts. I am glad that all the houses made their quotas despite the deep recession.Do you happen to know which house went over quota by 11?

My friend, who has graduated but is still loosely connected to her chapter, said Theta has 59.

Numbers at SC
 

Tri Delta had 62. Perhaps AmyCat can give us the DG number.

WOOHOOOO Welcome to Crescents and Pearls and true- hearted girls!!!:D:D:D:D:D

go bruins yee

bruin27:

I don't know if you received the memo but, since I am an alum of both USC and UCLA, I feel that I can add my two cents here. This board is designed to support PNMs going through recruitment and to support Greeks and their chapters. This is not a venue for childish rivals' rant(s), tantrums or injections of Go....whoever.

Have you ever noticed that women congratulate pledges that didn't pledge their GLO? It's called class. Learn from it.

Calm your ass down
 

It's part of attending one of the two schools so deal with it theirs nothing wrong with a little rivalry.