trouble getting girls to sign up for formal rush
 

Formal rush is going to be so small. We are not a big greek school but quota is normal 33 to 35. I think we are only going to get maybe 15 at the most because barely any girls signed up for rush. Is everyone having this problem? We had a great turn out for informal rush with 15 girls but formal rush is always bigger then informal. I just don't get it :confused:

I think girls are getting tired of formal rush, period. They think it's "fake" and if they're going to join would rather do it through informal (although I don't think this has hit the South yet). But I don't have any idea if this is just a short-term trend that will change, or if it is a permanent shift that Panhels had better adjust to.

If formal is second semester, though, that means the chapters have to work crazy hard first semester promoting sorority life ... and have candidates for informal bids in mind even before formal rush begins.

At the University of Puget Sound (a smaller liberal arts school) we actually saw the number increase this year after decreases the past few years (but still not as high as they had hoped for). We also saw a higher informal number as well. But, I believe, we have a pretty "casual" Formal recruitment in comparison to other schools.

Not exactly the answer you hoped for........

Freshman can only rush second semester. It just seems like the freshman are not interested. When I rushed my Freshman year there was over 300 of us and now there is only 150 or less rusing. There are 7 sororities on my campus that participate in formal rush and one of them you have to have a certain major to get in.Oh well we will get to know the girls better but I might not get a little again! :(

We have spring formal recruitment too. The trend might be heading down, who knows.

Sorry. Good Luck though!

Is the signup period over or can they also sign up when they get back to school? If it's the latter, I would not be worried yet - women may be waiting for grades/parental approval/seeing if they are transferring. Especially if there's a signup fee. And there are people are "putter-offers" - if they do it too early and have too much time to think about it they'll chicken out.

Just look at it this way, you'll be able to open bid more girls. I always found that I could get to know what girls were really like during open bidding because the atmosphere was more relaxed and I got to spend more one on one time with them.

I know what you're saying. My school is not a big Greek school either and this spring quota is set at 3. Only 24 girls came out and there are 8 sororities (but there are 7000 students & 60%+ of them are female) Plus a few of those initial 24 can't actually pledge because of grades or have since dropped out for other reasons. I really don't know why this is because my school is mid sized and we have had more girls out for formal rush in the past....maybe we'll get more next year...I don't know, I guess its just one of those things...

Livvy8....
 

...where do you go to school?:confused:

We have deferred formal recruitment too. For the last couple years, numbers were way down. Quota was only like 5!! This year, the Panhellenic went out dorm storming TOGETHER, assigning 2 sororities a night to visit dorms. They also held sign ups ALL OVER campus instead of just in the Student Union. They ended up nearly doubling the number of girls going through.

We do formal in the spring and have seen interest be high one year and low the next. Last year quota was 8 this year 13...it hurts the chapters I know getting to total if they aren't there already but I hope yours is not hurt too much if interest stays low! Good luck!

i hate formal recruitment
i hate decorating for 20 or less girls to come through
and by the end of it, 10 girls have dropped out(they have a rule that you have to come to the entire rush or you can't come at all)
however, formal recruitment is somewhat fake but it's only with some sororities

so, this year i begged our panhell to send out flyers
we handed out hot cocoa during the winter with go greek stickers on them
all of the sororities made signs to hang around campus
every week, one sorority and one fraternity have an informational table out

Has your Panhellenic ever done a survey of women not participating in recruitment to see why that is? It might help give insight into whether they aren't interested, if they have negative perceptions of sororities, etc. We have done this, and have found that many women don't participate on our campus due to the objection of parents or boyfriends.

To add to BSUPhiSig's train of thought....

If the reason would turn up the girls have already found their niche...and a sorority ain't it, I would suggest proposing 1st semester recruitment to your campus Panhellenic. If you talk with your headquarters, I'm sure they have some kind of statement in reference to this. From my understanding, most NPC sororities are in favor of this.


But I may be jumping the gun...

One of the things our campus Panhel did was give out some kind of gift to the freshman women during registration. Because it had all of the sororities' names on it, it was ok to give out. Although they may not say, "A free water bottle! I'm in!", it will let them know that this an activity option from day 1.

As an alumna "helper" at my chapter's recruitment this year, I know that our university was having a very tough time recruiting women to go through formal recruitment. At a meeting for the sororities the night before recruitment began, the Greek advisor gave everyone an extra hour and a half of talking to women (this is during limited silence, mind you!) to encourage women to go through recruitment. The Rho Gammas went dorm-storming to drum up interest, and I know that the numbers did rise, from something like 65 to around 88 (I think). We're a really small school with seven sororities, so quota is usually around 10 or so. I know also that the Greek advisor during that meeting said if the numbers didn't start to improve, recruitment might be changed to a sophomore year deferred rush, which would really hurt a lot of the sororities...especially those who are pretty close to total and lose large numbers of women each year. Our chapter has been pretty consistent (we're also one of the smallest chapters), but next year the chapter is graduating 17 SENIORS out of about 35 women! That's really going to hurt!:(

When my school held Formal Recruitment, 20 women signed up. Quota was 4. We only got 3 women. It was disappointing. Nobody seememd interested in greek life this year. :-(

I don't know that deferred Rush has ever helped a campus improve numbers lol . . .

I believe Moxiegirl has the right of it, girls are more likely to find a niche before Spring semester.

I know on my campus we have problems getting women to sign up for recruitment, mainly because many of the people that go to our school are first in their families to go to college....IN turn many of them know little to nothing about greek life. In addition to that, the other two state schools have much larger greek life systems, so people do not come to NAU looking for greek life. The big things we try to do to get women to sign up are: Booths at Orientation weekends, Greek Life as a whole puts on an info session during the Orientation weekends also, Flyers about greek life are in all the information that new students get at Orientation, and to try to get returning students to go through formal recruitment we also have done flyers to the on campus residents and lowered the registration price for returning students. The big thing that makes it difficult in some ways for our campus to get women to go through recruitment is the fact that we do it the week before classes start.

Ok...I think I blathered about this too much.

Here's a silly question. Or maybe another way to look at it.

For schools with fall formal recruitment, how many of your NMs end up depledging/disaffiliating/whatever because they thought it was right for them, but ended up not being a good match or what they expected in terms of costs or responsibility?

For schools with spring formal recruitment, do you have lots of members depledge?

Or is that more of an effect of big vs. small chapter size?

Just curious...

Most of the women we have that depledge at my school (Fall recruitment)...is not because they dont feel that it was the right choice or what not, but because they realize they dont want to stay at the university...So in turn a lot of women will realize how unhappy they are here (people either love this school or hate it)...and will depledge...or some will make it through initiation then still leave at the semester or at the end of the year...

I think fall recruitment helps bring up the numbers, as does dorm storming and other Panhel activities. I'm against having mentors or movers wear their own letters, but for heaven's sake, why can't they wear a "Go Greek" or another Panhellenic/IFC slogan on a t-shirt during Orientation or moving-in days?

What I'm worried about is the impact of MTV's Sorority Life. As an alumna, I've heard way too many parents say that they'd never okay their daughter going greek if that's what it's really about. Somehow, Panhel needs to address the negative aspects of this show ASAP before it does further damage to the Greek image!

I also agree with White Chocolate - decorating for 10 people seems a little absurd. FWIW, one of the best rushes we had was when we decided to buck the trend and go low key all the way. The other sororities were serving cheesecake? We served salads. They put up mega-decorations? We put the money into furnishings & shined up all the silver.

Another idea that I saw work well was when one sorority used the same basic theme (they used South of the Border) for the entire week of recruitment. That way, there wasn't the nightly stress of tearing down the old decorations & putting up the new. They capitalized on the time they spent doing sisterhood projects and grades - plus, saved a small fortune on rush supplies!

Just my 2¢

honeychile

I go to a school in the South, and here Greek life is the "thing to do". I think that 1 out of every 4 girls here are in a NPC GLO. Our rush is huge! We have over 900 girls rushing, and last year I believe that quota was in the 80's. It's a very hectic time for both the rushers and the rushees. Sometimes I wish that the formal recruitment here was smaller so that girls could get more one-on-one time with each house. For us, the first day consists of spending 15 minutes at each of the 12 houses, and you have to cut at least 5 that day. It's hard cause they all run together the first day, and it's so impersonal. They say it all works out in the end, which I think is true, but it takes so much pressure off with less chaos