RFM question now that bid day is here
 

DD gets her bid in a few hours, so I'm curious about how this works under RFM (not counting being placed as a QA). Quota at her school was 87. She preffed 3 houses and ranked them 1, 2, and 3. If she's in sorority 1's top 87, does she automatically get placed there? If she's not on their list but she is in sorority 2's top 87, does she go to sorority 2? What if sorority 3 has her ranked somewhere higher on their list than either of the other two houses? Or is it not that simple of a process?

Its not that simple. Think of the first bid list like a box. The number of PMs that is quota goes into the box. You don't come out of the box until you match somewhere.

So if you are in sorority #1's top 87 you get a bid there. However, you don't move to looking at your 2nd choice until your first choice reaches quota. So, for example, you are #90 on your first choice's list. You might not match during first pass, but if/when 3 pnms that are in their first 87 get bids elsewhere, you at #90, get moved onto the bid list ie go into the box. The next time through the pms you match at your first choice.

So it doesn't matter where you are on your second or third chapter's bid lists, you continue to attempt to match to your first choice, until they make quota. Then, and only then, does the process move to looking at your second choice. The process then starts over with the second choice.

Applause
 

I think this is the best, most concise explanation of how bid matching works that I have ever read! Love the box analogy!!!

And Lagniappe, best wishes for your DD when she opens her bid!

Like you, I would love for Phi Mu to be in the running should TAMU open for extension.

Thank you for the wonderful explanation! I should've known it wouldn't be that simple :)

She's at Texas A&M; festivities begin at 3:35 with bid card reveal at 4:45.

Ladybug12, thanks for your wishes. It's been a long week, for certain. I'm glad she's my only daughter so I only have to go through this once :)

How do you know what quota is if bids haven't been distributed yet?

Quoting the number that was mentioned on another thread. If not actually 87, it should be pretty close to that because that's what Panhellenic said they were anticipating it to be at the parent convocation on Sunday.

With RFM, a quota range is established and chapters put all the PNMs that attend their preference in numerical order, 1 through the last PNM to attend preference. First bid list used to be in alphabetical order and number what quota had been set at, usually number of PNMs that accepted preference invitations divided by number of chapters.

With RFM, a quota range is established and bid matching is done with using various quota numbers. It may be that more women are placed with a smaller quota and lots of QAs. But the RFM specialist works with the bid range to establish a quota that will place the most women in a chapter. So quota isn't actually set until the bid matching ends.

Agreed, AZ-AlphaXi. I was just curious how a mom of a PNM would be stating quota before time ;)

Ahhh ... I guess I was in the explaining mode and that's how I read the question. :D

As a chapter adviser, the FSA told us the quota numbers 6 hours before bids were distributed. Bid Day was this past Tuesday. Our chapter women got the actual list about 2 hours before bids were opened.

I think someone "in the know" shared their numbers and Lagniappe read that on another thread....

Call it, thinking inside the box. :D :p

Basically, bid matching is done PNM to chapter not chapter to PNM.

Continuing the analogy, if you are on #2's bid list (first 87 when quota is 87), you are in the box, and can only be moved out of the box if you match to #1. It's not as though #2 can fill its box without you while you are waiting around to see what happens at #1. If you are high enough on #2's bid list to receive a bid, the ONLY WAY you don't get a bid from #2 is if you match to #1. This is the myth of "cross-cutting."

All of which is to say that, when it comes to final preference rankings, you should list them in true preference order, there is no reason to be strategic about what would give you the best chances to get a bid.

Some people think that cross-cutting is a myth. It existed in a big way pre-RFM. This happened when a girl would rank sorority A as #1 and B as #2 but she would be on B's first list and A's second one. Girls would end up bidless some of the time.

Yes, cross cutting happened at Texas A&M back in the early 90's!

Being a math nerd, I think I am going to attempt to make a video of how bid matching works so that folks can "see" it. I always say, "If you cannot make the math visible, you don't understand it."

Seriously though, I think this would be an awesome idea. I sure hope you do it.

I will! Give me a little time, some colored Post-It Notes, a blank wall and then watch me! The thing about a preferential bidding system is that it is like an invisible sieve "in motion" at all times until matches are exhausted, so unless you can "see" the sieve and the movement, it is a bit mysterious.

I need to decide upon an adequate number of sororities and PNMs to do the trick. It doesn't have to be a lot, but it needs to be enough!

I don't doubt that there were schools that didn't follow standard bid matching procedure pre-RFM, but if they did, what you described could not happen. Going bidless meant she wasn't high enough on either list. If she had ranked B as #1 and A as #2, she still would have been bidless.

If you've ever done hand bid matching simulating that should be rather easy. Just a lot of those big poster sized post it notes.

I watched it happen several times during very closely monitored hand matching. Had the girl put A as her number 1 and B as her number 2, she would have matched. As it was, both filled up before she matched. Quota was set before prefs back in the day so many girls went to the maximum number of prefs, listed all their parties, and still didn't get bids.

Also, there were no QAs. Come to think of it, a lot of women today would go bidless without QAs.

Yay! It would really behoove NPC to do something like this...not only for PNMs and their parents, but also alumnae who might not understand the process.

If I remember correctly, quota was set the day before pref- I will have to ask my friend who was in Panhellenic. We had no quota additions and each chapter could take up to 3 "free" juniors.

That must have been pre-RFM. The situation as you've described simply isn't how RFM works. Quota isn't set under RFM until bid matching is complete.

You know what? I'm thinking that back in the day, quota was often set after the first round of parties. As you can imagine, that kept big sororities bigger and ensured the demise of many smaller ones since a lot of girls dropped out between first parties and Bid Day.

And of course, rushees could cut sororities at any time so many sororities never saw a fair number of rushees after the first set of parties.

When I was Rush Chair (as it was known back then) in 1977, quota was set the round before preference by dividing the number of women coming back to those parties by the number of sororities. Thus, it was set artificially high because women released or who dropped out after getting their preference invites were counted towards quota.

This was still the NPC rule when I was an adviser in the 1990's. In the 2000's release figures changed a bit, but RFM has definitely leveled the playing field...thank goodness!!!

Yes-1992, way befor RFM.

I'm a little confused. If she was on B's first list, then B could NOT have made quota before getting to her name.

She would have had to be on both group's second list and they both reached quota before getting to her name, regardless of how she had listed them.

Oh man. I am not explaining this well but I know exactly what I mean! It's all in the order she listed them in her card.

Let me see if I can take a stab at it. And I think it best if everyone forgets or at least never ever again repeats how things worked pre RFM (since all it does is confuse people).
Forgetting the part about quota being adjusted to find the best matching rates, and way over-simplifying, quota is 50. Each chapter has 75 girls on their list. Rushee has attended 2 preference parties and put both on her bid list.
Scenario 1: Rushee is in sorority A's top 50 and has sorority A as her #1. Match!
Scenario 2: Rushee is # 55 on sorority A's list. Sorority A did not match with 5 of their top 50. Rushee has now bumped up to spot #50. They are #1 on her list. Yeah! Match.
Scenario 3: Rushee is #58 on Sorority A's list but they completed quota at #55 on their list. She will not be on sorority A's initial bid list. See below about QA's.
Scenario 4: continuing from 3, Rushee is in the top 50 on Sorority B's list. Match!
Scenario 5: continuing from 3, Rushee is #55 on Sorority B's list. They lose 5 girls to other chapters so she is now their #50. Match!
Scenario 6: continuing from 3 Rushee is #55 on Sorority B's list. They fill their quota at #54. She will not be on Sorority B's initial bid list. See below about QA's.
Quota additions: So rushee is not on either chapter's initial bid list. HOWEVER, she did follow the rules and maximized her options, putting both chapters on her list. Here's where it gets tricky (the only part so far that actually IS tricky). She will absolutely be placed on one or the other's list. Which one will be determined by the RFM specialist and The Machine. If one of these chapters is smaller than the other, likely she will go to that one. But the system might have been set to put her in her higher choice, sorority A, or it might have been set to put her in the chapter that ranked her higher, sorority B. My understanding is this process is determined (and completely secret) differently at different schools.

But the part that is absolutely critical to remember is that 1-both chapters absolutely wanted her on their list so the fact that she's a QA is completely irrelevant and 2-nobody in the chapter (save a very very few people) know exactly where the girl ended on the list so the sisters don't know that was a QA, 3-the method of deciding whether she gets A or B is a secret and no amount of prognosticating or begging is going to help you figure that out and 4-there is no way to game the system to ensure you get in A over B. Not maximizing your options won't work because if you weren't on their list when it was your turn, and you didn't maximize your options, you aren't eligible to be a QA. So you are better off putting both on your list AS LONG AS you are willing to take either chapter. If you put both but would rather have your eyes poked out than be in B, then you are better off not maximizing your options because then you are eligible for informal rushing later on. If you decline a bid, then you are not. It's all right there in that official contract you signed after you finished your pref parties.

Excellent work, DubaiSis.

I still want to make a moving picture of it actively happening ... :D

And we want to see it! :D

You would be looking at a computer monitor for probably 1 second. None of this is done by hand anymore. The computer will take 1000 girls (or whatever), go with the suggested quota and run the list. Then it will bump it up 1 and see what happens, then drop it 1 and see what happens, then up by 2, then 3, then 4, etc. It will run the scenarios and then drop in the quota additions and spit out 15 bid lists (or whatever). It would be like watching an Excel spreadsheet figure a math total. While there IS a process, it happens so fast, as far as you know, you ask for a total and it spits out a total.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/ny...cess.html?_r=4

This article helped me understand "mutual selection." A lightbulb went off in my head when I read it the first time.

Ah, yes ... the devil is in the details. However, I believe that the reason so many folks still don't understand the process is because the "instant answer" is akin to the Wizard of Oz telling Dorothy, "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!"

Just because the computer can do it for us doesn't mean we should lose sight of being able to know WHY one is a snail and ten is a crab! I am a math major, and I used game theory (which bid matching is based on) when I wrote my dissertation. One of my committee members said "you write like you are opening Russian dolls." Not one person on my committee was a math major, but yet I convinced them all that I should stand on the philosopher's stone and be hooded.