Recruitment begins today!
 

Well, recruitment for my chapter begins today. Hopefully they are prepared! I will let you all know how it goes, but wish us luck please! I'm going to be there for all 4 days...but not bid day because I need a day off as an alumna. ;)

If any of you are in the Southern California area and close to Long Beach, let me know, we need some extra help. :cool:

GOOD LUCK! Let us know how they do!

Good Luck!!!!

Can't wait to hear all about it, I hope things go wonderfully for Long Beach. I'd love to help out, but I'm about 30 hours away...a bit much for a road trip :D

Roses,
Christin

Best of luck! I hope everything goes smoothly and look forward to hearing the results. :) :) :)

Oh believe me, I will be letting you know how they do. Recruitment is my thing, even though I'm the scholarship adviser. I loved being the VP Rush when I was...it was the best job ever!

I hope that my girls let their lights shine!

They will, don't worry about it. You just enjoy the alum side of rush, and do whatever you can to make their tasks easier this week (I know you will!)

Do they have a chapter web site up? If so, I'd love to see it!

Roses,
Christin

No website yet, that is something that I am looking into doing for them, but I'm rather elementary in my web design options at this point, and plus I just started a new job, I'm trying to finish with my master's and I have to start my teaching credential. So I've got some time constraints. :)

Anyhow round 1 went well, about 190 girls were signed up for Recruitment prior to sorority info night, and another 110 or so signed up that night. We've already had a few drops, but beyond that I don't know about numbers. The house looked great, and we got many compliments as to how our house seemed more like a home and not a show piece like many of the others. I guess a lot of the houses were rushing outside, and we were one of the only houses actually rushing in our house(mainly because we don' have a backyard, but I digress.

The Sisters looked great, their songs were cute, though they needed a bit more pep in them(sorry it's the cheerleader in me) but overall I think they did well for the number of girls we have compared to the number of PNMs, we had to double and triple rush for a lot of the parties. It was kind of odd, the PNMs this year even if you are mid sentence, sometimes just pick up and say, "Well it was great talking to you, I want to look at the house." and they just walk away while the sisters are in mid sentence....and the sisters are thinking"Ohhhhhkay...." I think our CC (who is super cool!) had a talk with some of the Sigma Rho Chis and asked them to inform girls today to stay with their respective hostess, as the PNMs were doing this at other houses as well. Odd isn't it?

Anyhow, we have round two today, and I really hope that our returns are great because we have a amazing video planned for today and some fabulous songs as well.
I will let you know how it all goes....off to round two(BTW we have three rounds then pref, because last year a lot of the PNMs were saying they wish they had more time to decide and meet the sisters at all the houses, so this may work in our favor even though we're much smaller.)

Roses,
Suzanne:D

Good Luck and keep posting. I can't wait to hear how it all turns out :)

Suzanne, how did the video round go? I can't wait to hear!

Roses :)

Ok, so I'm getting ready for round three and I figured I should probably update you all on how round two went.

Well....returns were less than stellar. Of the 280 girls who were going through rush, only about 70 returned to our chapter(YIKES) but the good part of this is the fact that all 65 girls had us very high on their respective lists...so they all actually wanted to be there instead of having a whole lot of girls who really didn't want to. Also many of the sisters are new and this is their 1st formal recruitment so they didn't know that our numbers weren't good. We also know that the other houses on campus all cut heavily today, so we will probably get a few girls back today who were not with us yesterday.

Anyhow it was house tour day, and the house tours went well...all the PNMs loved our house. They thought it was great, and were pretty excited that we have two open beds.(There might be a waiting list!) The video was AMAZING! The friend of the recruitment adviser that did it did such an amazing job, it was just incredible...even some of the PNMs got a little teary eyed.(YES!)

Well, off to get ready...hopefully we can keep all the girls who came yesterday and some new ones.

Roses,
Suzanne

Ok, back from round three, and as suspected about 80 girls came today, as opposed to the 65 we had yesterday. Most all were thrilled to be there, we had a couple who were less than thrilled, but oh well, you can't please everyone all the time.

Philanthropy was the theme, and the members and PNMs painted little picture frames for children in the hospital suffering from Arthritis, which was cute. Some of the PNMs really got into their projects and didn't want to leave, we kinda had to remind them they had to go. Overall it went super well. The chapter is really pepped up for pref tomorrow. (I just wish I could get there earlier, but I have a meeting until 645)

Will let you know how it goes, but so far so good, and the CC is super pleased with our efforts. Yay Lambda Beta! Now we have to knock em dead(so to speak) with pref.

Roses,
Suzanne:cool:

It sounds like it is going great! Hope pref is fabulous. It sounds like it will be. :)

Wow, how awesome that you had 15 additional PNMs return to this round. The frames sound really cute, I'm sure the kids in the hospital like having something special for a photo there with them. Sounds like things are going great for Lambda Beta! Please let them know we're all sending cyber-roses to them for a wonderful Pref night.


Roses,
Christin

OOOOO. I can't wait to hear how Pref goes! I know you won't be there for bid day, but don't leave us hanging!!!

Just got back from Pref, and we had about 65 women on the list, but a few dropped, and a few were no shows, so I think we ended up with about 50. It was beautiful, it was the same ceremony we used when I was recruitment chair about 6 years ago, but it's a good one....even brought a tear to the CCs eye! I think it went well, but I won't know till tomorrow....so I will keep you all updated. I'm so tired I think I'm going to fall over....(16 hours in heels with work, school and then pref has killed me today!)

Roses,
Suzanne

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

When is BID DAY? When will we find out??????

Well, bid day was yesterday, but I guess technically we are still trying to figure out how many NMs we have....since we offered 17 bids, but so far only 6 have really accepted. I'd have to say they are the most expensive pledge class in history if this is the case. Will let you know more, but needless to say I am a little disappointed.

:( Suzanne

Hey, I'll look at the good side here, congrats to the 6 confirmed newest AOIIs :)

Hopefully things will get sorted out with the other bids and we'll have even more beautiful new members in California.

Roses,
Christin

Oh man! Don't look at it like that. You've got to love everyone whether it be one or fifty.

Figure out what happened, correct it for next year and get psyched for COB. I love COB. And if you've not done a lot of that in the past - please let me know. We do about 14 or so COB parties each quarter. We're getting to be pros and we've got some great parties and ideas that I'm willing to share.

Keep your chin up, the girls will be looking to you and your other AAC members for support and encouragement.

HUGS!

Heidi

I think that you all are mistaking my disappointment with the other 11, I'm thrilled with the 6. It's crazy when quota is 38 and all houses hit it, except two...and the one above us is at 25...sooooo....anyhow no I am happy for the 6 =)

Suzanne,

I haven't been on the board in a while and curiously enough, I just finished reading another post on the Rush board about recruitment at Long Beach. (I think this is your university. If not, please excuse my mixup.) The person was an alumna that helped her chapter with recruitment there and noted that no house there pulled even close to quota. She said that even the typically strong houses didn't make the number and that all the houses are now in a position to COB about 10 or more to make quota. She was wondering if Panhellenic made a mistake by not dropping the number for quota.

I realize that this probably doesn't ease your disappointment (I would be disappointed for the members too), but it might explain where things went south in the whole process. Hopefully COB will bring some more new members.

Your chapter is lucky to have comitted alumnae like you to help and support them!

Well, Suzanne, how did it eventually turn out? Did the other 11 ladies accept their bids??

......Kelly :)

No they did not,though we go another couple through COR. It turns out there was a lot of dirty rushing going on with other houses on campus, i.e. saying "Oh you don't want to join AOII, their international is going to close them down," and "They don't hang out with guys, why would you want to join their house?" All of which is untrue, as many of the girls is the house are very active etc...Unfortunately we didn't find stuff like this out until well after rush was over, and the funny thing is that we are so much smaller than the other houses it seems odd that they would be trash talking us any how. It seems that though we are small, we are powerful and threatening.

In the mean time, I have no idea what panhellenic is going to do about the situation. Will keep you all updated though. I was so angry when I found all of this out.

Regardless, the girls we got are great though. =)

Those are the exact same rumors that went on about our chapter too and as a result, last year we only got one new member on bid day and the other 2 groups on campus got quota of 19. I was so upset because it was my senior year and we didn't want to leave the chapter in such a slump. However, we worked our tails off, got some awesome girls through COB and with an amazing recruitment chair leading the chapter they have 11 wonderful new members now and if they add one more they will have doubled the chapter in one single semester!!! :) Keep your heads high and don't lower the standards just for numbers, there are some wonderful girls out there that would make awesome alpha's! It just takes LOTS of searching sometimes. Tell the girls they have all of our support!!! GOOD LUCK!

Roses,
Sarah