Worth Going Through Informal as a Soph after getting dropped?
 

Hi all! I will be a sophomore this year at ABC U on the West coast. Rush is a very competitive process at our school, we have less than ten houses that take maybe 250-300 girls out of 600 girls who rush.

I went in freshman year extremely excited and open minded. I have siblings who are Greek at different schools, friends who are Greek, and they gave me their best advice and tips--mainly to go in and give each house a chance. Unfortunately for me, I was dropped and the rest of the quarter really went downhill for me. Seeing all my dormmates get bigs & littles, go to their events, and bond with their sisters was really, really hard and lonely.

This year, there are some invite-only informal recruitment events and a sweet friend of mine nominated me to go. I don't think I can go through the feelings of being rejected and dropped by every house again, and informal rush is really competitive. And unfortunately, sophomores at my school rarely get into sororities during formal rush in the spring (most of the sororities flat out don't accept sophomores and transfers). I am wondering if I could get some insight or advice on whether or not I should go through with it, because this is my almost last chance.
Thanks :)

If you do not go to informal recruitment, you have a 100% chance of not getting a bid.

This could very well be your last chance.

We don't know you. We don't know your school (though some who are familiar with West Coast recruitment might). We don't know what your chances are.

However, we know that going through informal recruitment will give you at least a possibility of getting a bid. Not going through informal recruitment takes your chances down to zero.

You decide.

This is not how recruitment works. I'm sorry you were dropped, but even on the most competitive campuses (and they aren't on the west coast) chapters don't "take" less than half of PNMs. Read a little on the recruitment forum and you'll understand the process a little better. Informal may be a more laid back atmosphere for you, but depending on the chapter, they may have very few open spots to go around. That being said, you'll never get a bid if you don't try.

Just try....
 

This is very true. Just keep an open mind and see if maybe one of your friends in a sorority can look at your outfit for the event.

Good luck.

I usually don't obsess over things, but I am starting to feel like it is my Greekchat mission in life to stop the myth that there is a predetermined number of available spots in formal recruitment. Between the moms and PNMs who perpetuate this falsity, it is driving me crazy.

You have indicated this is likely your last chance, and the only thing you have to lose is a wounded ego. You are going to experience a lot of rejection in your life. Go through the process, or you'll be left wondering "what if?" forever.

You say things went "downhill" for you after you were released from recruitment last year. It's ok to feel disappointed or sad if things don't work out, but if your grades are suffering, or you don't feel as social as you used to feel after the rejection of being released from recruitment, it could be part of a bigger problem that needs to be addressed. If that is the case, please do seek out the counseling services on your campus. You don't need to keep feeling terrible, and they can help you if that is the case. Life is going to hand you a lot of rejection, and it is important to learn how to bounce back from it and to not be afraid to keep trying.

Good luck. I really think you should give the sororities a shot so you can know with full confidence you gave 100% toward trying it out.

Thanks for the advice everyone! And AOII, I actually talked to the woman in charge of Greek life on campus, so those numbers are accurate. At my school, about 50% of the girls who rushed ended up in a sorority. It certainly wasn't pre-set because a lot of the houses gave more bids than they were supposed to, but this year an extremely large number of girls rushed. Granted, maybe 5-10% of girls dropped.

I know life is about rejection and I have faced rejection, but it really affected me personally and I can't let anything affect my grades this semester.

That being said, I do want to give it one more try. I think I will go for it. Thanks for the advice everyone :)

I assure you, no matter what school you are at, that close to 50% of the women rushing dropped, if only 50% ended up with bids. Unless you are at IU or Nebraska (which you aren't), very few women get no invitations.

This just doesn't sound right. Instead of having us guess and speculate, how about just telling us what school you are talking about?? We are really shooting in the dark without knowing that. Our advice is not going to help much without at least a little more information.

On my campus, Greek life really small and only a few houses do informal so it would be very obvious who I was.

Only 3 houses are doing informal recruitment, 2 of which are invite-only. Hopefully I get an invite to the other house!

You don't necessarily have to id your campus. If you want to join a sorority, get yourself a fresh attitude, a hot new outfit and go for it girl! You said a sweet friend had "nominated" you..is she a sorority member? If yes, that's a great start. Maybe you two can have a coffee and she can give you a little coaching to help you get your head back in the game before you attend an informal event. Ask her!

I can't think of any schools on the West Coast where sophomores and transfers are at a severe disadvantage in recruitment. Sometimes women who are a little older, closer to 21, actually have an advantage over the new freshmen. They can be more mature, better at relating to the women they meet because they have shared experiences and are past the "I just moved into my dorm room and can't wait to PARRRTY!!!" phase. Informal is a great way for women who may get lost in the formal recruitment process to shine.

You can do this! It may not work out, but it just might. Either way you'll be better off for the experience of dusting yourself off and knowing you can get through that disappointment and move on to your next great adventure, whatever that may be.

Thanks so much for your encouraging words! Yes, one of my friends nominated me and I plan on visiting her at the start of the school year and talking with her.

At my school, it's sad but true that sophs/transfers are at a disadvantage. What upsets me the most is that some houses don't even give these girls a chance, unless you have great connections. However, every year are some success stories with upperclassmen, so I am hoping I will be one of them.

OK, so if you do go forward, what is going to make this rush different for you? What can you point out to them to show that you are the new & improved Sunrain?

I mean this sincerely, not trying to be pissy or confrontational! I assume that you put your best foot forward last time around. If you do the same thing this time, you are not likely to get a bid.

building on thetalady, now is a good time to have a heart to heart with yourself about what's really going on. Regardless of what the Greek Life office said, it is highly irregular to be cut from every chapter, so something must be going on. Do you say goofy things to be funny that fall with a thud? Do you dress goofy, badly, inappropriately for the event? Do you have bad breath? Do you like to have obsessive conversations about things that other people think are weird and/or creepy? While we here on Greekchat like to argue about how nice and friendly we should be with rushees, you will do yourself no good by blowing sunshine up your own skirt.

My next piece of advice is while you read through threads here, if you find a GCer who seems to be from your area, you might send that person the whole story in a private message. I can suggest a few very helpful women in Southern California, but I'm useless on Central or Northern California. But I'm sure there are some women here who would be glad to provide you some discreet advice.

/eta and looking through the list of campuses in California, I'm wondering if your school has a colony coming on this year. This would be another opportunity for you to consider. They are not gimmes and they are more work than the more established chapters, but it may provide you the opportunity you seek IF you are at a school that has a colony coming. The process is too slow to hope for that to be an option if one isn't already in the works.

Then the woman isn't very knowledgeable or just isn't good at explaining things. Trust us, every single sorority did not cut 300 out of 600 women. The key words are "every single sorority." There may be a large percentage of women who only had invites to one sorority, but that is not the same as being completely dropped. Those women chose not to be a part of the Greek system if they didn't explore the option they had further.

At any rate, try informal rush. It's a lot more laid back and less of a cattle call atmosphere.

That's good input on what I should change. I am honestly not too sure. Some of the houses I was cut from weren't a good fit and even from night 1, I could tell I just wouldn't fit in. I think that I really realized one of the houses wasn't right for me when it became apparent that the girls I were talking to had been drinking.

As far as the other houses I saw and liked and was invited back to up until pref night, I think that I need to work on making myself more memorable and being less awkard. And connecting with each girl rather than trying to learn about the chapter as a whole, which is what I did in formal recruitment--I asked questions about what they loved about their house and tried to build it up from then. If I had known it was more about connecting with every girl, I would've gone about the process differently.

My school won't be having any more colonies coming :( When I talked to my greek adviser, this is something I mentioned because so many girls got cut/left the process. However, it would be a very slow process that all the houses would have to vote on. And with informal recruitment, she said it was highly unlikely that another chapter would colonize.

What did you think it was about? You're joining a student organization to make friends. Also, it sounds like asking someone what she loves about her sorority and asking questions about her membership is attempting to connect. Perhaps they thought you weren't a good fit, just as you decided you weren't a good fit in the others. No one can say for sure. But you can continue to practice your interviewing skills, and perhaps putting yourself out there and joining some other student orgs will be helpful. It will also help you get involved on campus and show you have even more value to a sorority. Not to mention it will be fun and keep you busy.

I'm also curious as to how you ascertained there were members who had been drinking during a recruitment event... Did you smell the alcohol on their breath? Observe them drinking?

It would be impossible to make a "connection" with every person you meet. It's more subtle than that- you want to leave a positive impression on each person you meet, or as many as possible, so that they feel you are a person they would like to get to know better.

As you already know, every chapter isn't going to be a good fit. And this may not be the right thing for you- obviously it's not for everyone. Many women sign up for recruitment, attend all the first or second round, have a full schedule of invites and drop out of the process for a whole host of reasons that are not necessarily "I didn't get my fave, so now I'm done with this recruitment thing." That doesn't mean there's something wrong with sororities, and if you weren't or aren't extended a bid, it doesn't mean there's something wrong with you. This is an exploratory process. Don't make it more serious than it is, and you'll probably be more relaxed and better able to present yourself in a more effective manner.

Yes, I could smell the alcohol. Maybe I was too vague, but it seems like a lot of people I talked to who rushed successfully didn't ask about their house or philanthropy at all, it was purely about other things. That's what I mean about connecting more with each girl.

Otherwise, I did make every attempt to talk about what interested me--from academics to extracurriculars to things that just came up naturally like movies, camping, smores, boyfriends, etc.

I think I will definitely take it less seriously, which would help. At the end of the day, it's just another social organization.

Until after you are initiated...and that's when it becomes something so much more.;)