Most Competitive Greek Systems?
 

Out of curiosity, which schools do you think have the most competitive recruitment?

I have a friend who is now a Kappa Kappa Gamma at Pitt who thought Indiana University's recruitment was very stressful. I know that Georgia, Mizzou, Ole Miss and other Southern schools often take their recruitment very, very seriously.

Add Bama, and yeah, you pretty much have them all. :D:o:);):cool::p

i would throw arkansas, virginia, and auburn in as well

Alabama hands down is the toughest (I think) in the country. Even as an Ole Miss alum I know our recruitment is tough but it's gotten better over the past 10 years. I also think Texas is pretty tough.

I'm an Alabama grad, and I'd have to say that Indiana's is probably the worst. Basing your quota on bed space...now THAT'S competitive!

Second would be Ole Miss. Only 9 sororities and almost 1,000 competing for slots...and through GC I'm hearing some rough stuff about Texas.

Alabama's is only competitive if you're going to turn up your nose at certain groups.:rolleyes:

same with fsu and florida.

The University of Southern California could be added to this list.

There's Texas, LSU, 'Bama, Ole Miss, Illinois, Indiana, Mizzou, USC, and perhaps a handful of other schools.

So true, unfortunately. We have 16 incredible houses, but so many girls going through rush automatically decide they could never be a part of about 8 of them, and get their hearts broken when those are the ones that ask them back.

Add SMU to the list.

I think we can safely add U of Arkansas to the list.

I love how some of the most selective SEC schools wear their exclusivity as a perverse badge of honor and even complain that they're not competitive enough already: "We had 1,600 girls go through, and somehow 700 still slid through the cracks!"

No complaints here. Out of all the women who participated in Bama's Recruitment this year 83% received bids and of those 87% got their first choice.

Nearly 12% of all PNMs voluntarily withdrew presumably because they weren't happy with their remaining choices. But that was their choice and not a matter of sliding through the cracks.

It wouldn't be a stretch.

This is Panhellenic party line nonsense. 87% of those receiving bids did NOT get their first choice, they got their first choice of the houses they had left. There is a HUGE difference.

But would it really help if they emphasized "first choice remaining after the last party"? I doubt it. People hear what they want to hear before recruitment starts and only really figure out what was meant as the rounds go on.

Other than not having quota or total so that "top" houses could give more bids than the others, what more could a school like Bama do to match girls? There's nothing that I can think of really.

Sure, they could release even more statistical information so that girls might be able to weigh their chances before recruitment started, but I think it would prejudice PNMs more strongly about the groups in question.

Fixed.

PNMs who are not happy with the choices they have left are free to withdraw. The real question is do you want to be Greek or do you want to be an XYZ? Besides, just because you want something doesn't me you're entitled to get it.

excellent point.

Would you like to be in a house full of girls who didn't want you to be their sister? If your answer is yes, what on earth are you joining a sorority for?

I'm not sure why some people got their hackles up by my calling out Panhellenic's BS. Nowhere does Zillini's original statement:
indicate that those 87% got anything other than their overall first choice from recruitment. My complaint is that that is exactly the insinuation that Panhellenic likes to make. "Spin" as O'Reilly would say.

Thank you SWTXBelle for taking my comment at its face value.

It's clear people didn't particularly like my comment, but no one took issue with its actual merit. Here are the responses.

I don't know if it would help, but I don't think assuming people won't comprehend the truth justifies bending it.

I never said I had a better idea for the member selection process, but that's not what we were talking about.


OK, you switched from telling us that 87% of your pledging PNMs got their first choice, to telling me that "just because you want something doesn't mean you are entitled to get it." How does that defend your original statement? I never said girls were ENTITLED to their first pick. I just said that a whole lot more than 13% don't get it!!

????? Um, no. And just because a girl gets cut doesn't necessarily mean the house didn't want them for a sister. How many threads have been devoted to heavy RFM cuts early on without getting to know girls etc.

I will stand by my statement. I really didn't mean for it to be inflammatory, but instead to correct misinformation. Truth be told, I agree with most of your responses. It's just that they don't relate to the 87% assertion.

I initially responded mostly because I have been unhappy with my own school's Panhellenic for years for broadcasing the very same statements to our PNMs. It just rubs me the wrong way.

In order for total clarity, HDL66, your statement isn't correct either. I say this because you don't know what percentage of the 87% really did get their first choice from Day 1. In order to have the clarity you seem determined to have, the information would have to be given in terms of how many women on each day of recruitment were invited to their first choice at that point in recruitment vis-a-vis their first choice before recruitment ever began if they had one. In other words:

1) Some women who have a pre-recruitment preference for a particular chapter will get that choice.

2) Some women who have no predetermined preference will get their first choice - once they determine what that chapter is.

3) Some women will not get their first choice at any point during recruitment.

So in a perfect NPC should we just divide up the PNMs and put them in the three top houses and have mega houses so no one has to join the lower tier houses? Yeah. That will keep everyone happy for about two seconds. 87% getting their first choice is actually an accurate measure of a successful system. The part I'd like to see expounded on is the 12% drop out rate. I would like to see how many chapters the PNMs have left when they drop out. If they have 4-5 chapters left when they drop out, that would be telling wouldn't it?!

I don't think anyone- including HDL- is critizing the system, or dissing on (ahem) "lower tier" groups, or saying that PNMs are entitled to certain chapters. If I am reading HDL correctly, she (he?) is simply stating that providing a stat such as "percentage of PNMs who get their first choice" can be misleading. I personally agree with that statement.

Of course it would be impossible to know, without a survey and 1600 completely honest PNMs, to know what percentage of PNMs received a bid to their first choice when considering all groups on campus and not just those that liked the PNM enough to invite them back to pref. Again, I don't think HDL, or anyone, is proposing such a survey or stat. Instead, if I am reading the post correctly, he/she is simply seeking a clarification of the statement to read that "87% of PNMs received a bid to their first choice out of houses that they preffed" or something to that effect.

As someone who lives outside of the state of Alabama, but who writes recs for PNMs that will be attending that school every year, I have seen first hand the unfortunate misconception that many of these naive 18 year olds have. They literally have the idea that "we get to pick the houses that we like" (aka ranking for RFM, with no concept that the houses TOO are doing some cutting). In addition, I have had several of them attempt to inform me that "almost everyone" gets into the house that they want. These are not those "I think I am better than you" type of PNMs... these are sweet girls who have just not grown up knowing much about Alabama rush, and who only know what they hear at orientation and read on the Greek Life website.

To clarify- I don't think that anything is wrong with the Alabama recruitment system. Nothing. But I have seen my share of sweet, naive-to-the-system 18 year olds completely misunderstand that one statistic. A simple clarification of what that statistic really refers to (pref night "first choice") would go a long way towards giving the PNMs a more realistic picture of the recruitment process.

HDL- If I have misrepresented your intent, my apologies.

ETA- and FWIW I *do* think that 87% of PNMs receiving their first choice after pref is an excellent placement rate. Kuddos to Bama for that.

This.

She.

Thank you. :)

HDL, thanks to Blondie I now understand the point you were trying to make. But as already said, without an in depth survey of PNMs there is no way to determine if the bid they got was from: their favorite from the beginning of Recruitment; a new favorite they discovered once they actually spent time with actives; one of the invitations they had left and had never really considered that Chapter before, yet find they truly like them; or if it was merely the best of or even the only remaining choice they had left.

In addition there is no way to know how many may have been disappointed with their remaining choice(s), yet decided to go ahead and accept a bid. Then they absolutely fell in love with their new sisters. On the other hand, I sometimes wonder how many accept a bid from a "top" Chapter just because it is a "top" and later realize they might have been happier elsewhere.

It had never occurred to me that this statistic was an attempt to "spin" as much as it is a soundbite reflection of one part of the compete statistics that Alabama releases.

I disagree that anyone is deliberately bending the truth on this point. Would does panhellenic gain with this spin?

getting pnms to fill out the "exit poll" on their recruitment experience is like pulling hens teeth-it ain't easy. i have seen these forms handed in with no answers, partial answers, etc. very few take the time to really read the questions and give heartfelt answers. they want to get on with their sorority experience or if they did not join, with their lives.

IMHO, two things.

1) More PNMs going through recruitment. You have to have more girls to increase your system. Bigger greek system --> expansion of chapters, expanded programing, more influence on campus, increased budgets, bragging rights, whatever.

There is a solid subset of girls that are raised knowing they will be rushing when they go to college. The competitiveness of the experience will not dissuade them, in fact, some embrace it. They are ready and know the game. There is a significant contingent, however, that aren't from this camp. If they realized that many strong houses will be cutting up to half of the PNMs in the first round or two, and the fact that you have a good GPA and resume may mean nothing if you don't have connections or "the look" or an elusive "something else," and you may come home with severely battered self esteem and a choice that you were less than enthusiastic about, I think some would say, "Who needs that? I'm not going to bother."

I honestly think this is a marketing tactic as much as an inert statistic made available to the public. The "statistic" of heavy cuts during early rounds is never mentioned to PNMs and specifics are not even available to alumni (unless you talk to your own house's recruitment advisor.) Panhellenic markets the greek system well and makes it sound like you are likely to get your "first choice." Don't get mad at these girls for having unrealistic expectations. Panhellenic (and sometimes alums) encourage girls casually interested to "try it out, what do you have to lose?" And then they feel like they had the rug pulled under them, and the response is, "well, what did you expect?" They EXPECTED that 87% of the girls were going to get their top pick, not their top pick of the 2 houses that hadn't cut them.

2) I think it protects the Greek system from bad press in a neutral-to-greek-hating media.

This is another reason why I dislike first semester (hell - first MINUTE you step on campus) rush. I can't imagine if my first college experience would have been judgement by a gaggle of girls I never met before. Not saying that girls don't suffer rejection in deferred rush, but you usually have made friends on campus, know your way around the school and are on a firm enough footing for it not to completely break you.

Supposedly rushing right away helps prevent "tent talk" but if that's the case, why do we have stronger and weaker chapters at schools that do it?

I love when people use the word "gaggle." LOL!

So maybe it does, but that same media doesn't understand that 1600 PNMs can't all have the same bid. It's a fact of life that you will be cut and that Suzy Badattitude may actually not get a bid at all. Recruitment isn't perfect, but if you asked the 87% of women who got their first choice on bid day, 99.9% of them are going to be ecstatically happy and not give a crap about what their first choice might have been on day 1 or 2 or even 3. The girls at these schools that HAVE to be in THE sorority are the same 12% that drop out when they get cut from the chapters that they are interested in. Maybe they could do a little better job of warning PNMs about the heavy cuts, but from what PNMs report, this is explained pretty well at the beginning of recruitment. Some PNMs, though, only want to hear what they want to hear.

Has anyone said University of Tennessee yet? I'll add them to the list!

When it comes to rush, I think people hear what they want to hear until something particularly happens to them, and then they often want to believe that what happened to them is unprecedented. So we get PNMs who want to believe that even though there have been heavy early releases for years that their recruitment counselors warned them about, that this year the computers messed up and the cuts were even worse.

And they are 18 years old, so I don't know that I have a big problem with it, but what I do sort of take issue with is finding fault with greek systems for the intensity of their recruitment when they do almost everything they really can to make it generate a bid for everyone.

If a system matches more than 90% of the girls who stay in recruitment with the options they have left, I think panhellenic is doing about all it can. Sure, it would be more accurate to say "X% are matched to the the first ranked of the houses they have left after the last round." But I really doubt that it will change anything about the experience of rushing.

ETA: the issues that do bug me about panhellenic are the misleading info they give out that ends up hurting the least in the loop, like when they give the party line on recommendations at campuses where recs are expects. We at GC all know, yes, officially the group will find you one if they want you and have to have one, but if you are an unknown PNM at Alabama, you need get your own recs sent.

[QUOTE=We at GC all know, yes, officially the group will find you one if they want you and have to have one, but if you are an unknown PNM at Alabama, you need get your own recs sent.[/QUOTE]

Ok, this is a bit off topic, but when I rushed this statement confused me...so are they basically saying that if you didn't have a rec, they would find someone to write one for you? Because if so, I feel it would defeat the purpose of the rec, cause that person really doesn't know you...please someone explain!

What it means is:

1) You must have a rec at Alabama

2) It's best that you get them yourself because of the sheer volume of women going thru and the fact that many of them send in 2 forms per house - or more! And the very compressed time frame during recruitment doesn't allow much leeway.

3) IF they REALLY want you, it is POSSIBLE for the group to locate someone to do a rec for you (I get calls from schools for recs from my town because they know I've done them before but it's really difficult when they call and say we love her and need something in an hour!)

4) But it's best to not put yourself in that position because the odds of them wanting you badly enough to go to that trouble during recruitment week are pretty slim

On this highly Rec oriented and competitive campus, the following is what I've witnessed.

PNM A has good grades, resume, etc, but does not have a Rec. While the actives like her well enough, there are plenty of other PNMs they like just as much who have just as good grades, resume, etc. and already have a Rec.

PNM B also has good grades, resume and doesn't have a Rec. Some of the actives fall madly in love with her. "OMG, this girl is my Rush Crush! I want to be her big sister! She's like the BFF I never knew I was missing!" The actives start scrambling to find an alumna willing to write her a Rec. (While this does happen, it is not the norm and no PNM should count on it being the case for her.)

I hope the following isn't too far from the actual situation:
From what I've heard and read about recruitment at Alabama -- and campuses with similar kinds of recruitment -- I get the strong impression that one of the reasons that "the odds of them wanting you badly enough to go to that trouble during recruitment week are pretty slim" is that :

if you don't have a rec at the start, there's a higher probablity that you'll be cut after the open house round or the first invitational round; sororities that are required to cut large or enormous numbers of PNMs very often start cutting by grades and/or lack of recs (and/or, as always, "reputation").

So, frankly, many sororities may not really have the time to get to know and luuuuuuvvv someone without a rec -- she'll be cut early because they have to start cutting somewhere.

Yeah, pretty much. Although hopefully a pre-freshman girl doesn't have a "reputation" at the college already. If she does, it's probably a negative one.

What I was confused about, was why they would have someone write you a rec KNOWING that person doesn't KNOW you, and therefore the rec basically has no validity...

But are you all essentially saying that the rec is need because a PNM gets points based off different aspects she brings to the table such as grades, high school activities, etc, and that she also gets points from having a rec, therefore they get an alum to write a rec, not for the alum's actual perspective about the PNM, but instead because it will give her needed points to compete with other PNMs that have all the other stuff and recs? Is this the basic concept?