for those who have 3 prefs?
 

I have a question for those who have 3 pref parties- how many chapters do you have at your campuses?

Our campus has 11 chapters, and has 2 pref parties. Our chapter development consultant says that we should probably have 3 parties. I personally agree and think that it would get a better return of girls not dropping out that night (always a problem).

Thoughts?

Whoa, only two? With that many chapters?

We had three pref parties and only FIVE sororities! Which, honestly, seems like a little overkill to me. (You went to 5, 5, 4 and 3.) I don't know what they'll do this year with only four chapters - it doesn't make sense to not cut until the last round.

Um... we have three sororities, and we have three pref parties. You can go to all three if you like (most go only to two).

But we do things a little bit differently here at Larry U.:rolleyes:

My school has 9 chapters and 3 pref parties.

Eleven chapters, 3 pref parties for us. I agree -- with that many chapters it really does make more sense to have more parties.

We have nine sororities (10 in about a month) and we have three pref parties. When I went through, we had 7 sororities and two pref parties.

We have 12 chapters and 3 pref events.

We have 6 chapters and 3 pref parties, but the PNMs only go to a max of 2. It's because we do recruitment on campus and the Commons follows the fire hazard guidelines very well. When I went through recruitment 3 years ago, we only had 2 parties, but it changed because of increase in PNMs. It works out better this way.

We have 4 sororities and 3 pref parties.

In some ways three-party pref is good in other's its not as helpful. A plus is that more women come back, because you have an extra party. A minus is that instead of a 1 in 2 chance (theoretically) to pledge these woman you have a 1 in 3 chance. It makes it much harder to get a strong feel on how the chapter did during pref, in my opinion.

How do your parties go? How many rounds etc? (like 11 release to X release to X release to pref??)

Also does your campus use release figures? (telling the groups a recommended number of invitations?

I guess this is my long long way of saying that everything has plusses and minueses. I think using release figures the right way is much much more useful than three-party pref. However for a campus of you size NPC recommends it in the green book.

we had 11 chapters and 2 pref parties

When I went thru, my campus had 12 groups and we had two prefs. We had four days of recruitment and went from 12, to 6, to 3, to 2 at pref. It worked.

The only thng about more pref parties and inviting more women back while keeping same numbers for quota just makes more women think they'll get bids from one particular house----which of course means more hurt feelings. But....if you are just doing it to decrease the numbers at each party, it's probably a great idea.

Just out of curiosity: if your sorority invites a woman to pref, does she show up somewhere on your bid list?

oregon state has 12 chapters that participate in formal recruitment and you can have up to 3 pref parties

11 rounds, to 8, to 4, to 2 pref parties.
Funny you should ask about release numbers. They lost them! So they kind of just guessed this year. Which wasn't good. But we did great and took quota, so I'm happy.

Honeychile- yes, if they attend pref they have to be on the bid list somewhere. Either first bid list, or second (ranked) bid list.

I think that it's an NPC rule of some sort that if you ask a girl to a pref party, she has to be somewhere on your bid list. I mean, face it, it's crummy to ask a girl to a pref party and sing to her about how much you want her and then drop her totally.

Actually it's not. It is a recommendation and some campuses make it a rule but it is not an NPC rule. I would be shocked at any group that would do that because it is cruel!

I think it was a rule at my school, that anyone invited to pref had to show up somewhere on a bid list - the idea being that you should only be inviting women whom you see as potential sisters. Pref voting sessions frequently went into the wee hours!

My freshman year, 4 sororities participated in formal rush. By my sophomore year, all 5 were participating. PNMs dropped from 5 to 4 to 3 to 2 for pref, and they couldn't list a sorority on their pref card unless they'd gone to that sorority's pref party.

We have three sororities and three preference parties and you can go to as many as you receive invites to.

When I rushed there were four sororities. I was invited to all four preference parties. I went the first one and spent the majority of my time there and then went to the other three to say thank you for inviting me.

AOX- that sounds different. How was it structured? With NPC rush, you have to stay at each party the entire 45 minutes (or however long it is). You must enter and leave with all the other rushees.

We participate in Rush with the two NPC sororities on campus. Basically the way we run Preference Night is that it lasts usually an hour and a half and most of the girls spend an hour with their top choice sorority (some stay the entire time) and then they go to the the other rooms, to which they were invited, to say thank you for the invite. At our school it isn't really a rotational round where you have to come and go as a group with other rushee's. This is the only event that you are free to go where ever you want.

Greek life at the University of Michigan-Flint is pretty small. There are three sororities that usually average between 15-30 members. Rush is usually small also. Usually there are only 15-20 rushee's and at the end of rush quota usually ends up around 5 or 6. :( My local sorority is the only sorority on campus to have a house so we hold all of the events in reserved rooms (all right next to each other) up at school.

Ahhh, very enlightening, thank you!

There's something to be said for that idea - you know who is at your pref because they love your group versus who is just there because they felt they had to go to the max number of parties! And you don't have to spend 45 minutes talking to a girl who is clearly disinterested.

That is what I like about how we run our Prefernce Night...we pretty much know how girls are going to fill out their cards based on the order in which they attended the rooms. It's a really good way to weed out some girls. If they don't come to your room they are obviously not interested and you get to focus on the girls who are interested.

There have been a few girls that we really, really liked that did not come to our room first and we still put them on our "B" list in case they changed their minds.

We go from 14-8-5-3.

We have 10 sororities and 3 pref parties.

I've found that 2 party pref is usually better for new member retention thatn 3 party pref b/c when you have 3 party pref some women wind up with their third preference which is psychologically more difficult than getting your second choice after getting released by your first choice going into pref.

This makes for good logic. I found myself wondering how a chapter could properly handle a third pref party, and come through it emotionally balanced! I would think that, by the third party, everyone would be totally drained!


honeychile

We have 4 sororities and 2 prefs. I have no idea how things would work if we had 3 prefs, like some of the other 4 sorority campuses have.

I did not go through formal recruitment as a PNM, but what lauradav said sounds very logical.