PRUSH vs SORUSH
 

Pro-Con on these two programs?

PRUSH means the PNM's rank the chapters before seeing invites, SORUSH means they see all invites and choose.

Do you think it is better for PNM's to rank the chapters first before they know where they have been invited, or is it better that they be given a list of invites and then choose? What are your thoughts?

I would think it would be better to let the girls see the invites and then choose. It puts them a little more in perspective about where they actually fit in. And I would think it would lessen heavy cutting, resulting in more girls being given bids.

I agree with what astroAPhi says about how seeing invites first helps PNMs keep things in perspective. What's the point of having a PNM rank sororities only to find that she has only been invited back to, say, two of them?

I definitely think SORUSH is the way to go. A PNM may love them all, but she has to cut one. So she does, gets her invites back and sees that someone else cut her and she didn't have to cut the other group. Does that make any sense at all? Sorry if it doesn't.

To clarify how PRUSH works:

The PNM's rank the houses, but they do not "cut" any of them. She puts as many #1 ranks as she can go back to the next round. She then does 2,3,4,5, etc. So if one of her #1 houses does not invite her back, she then goes to her #2 choice.

DeltaBetaBaby, then am I correct in assuming that part of PRUSH is that PNMs return to the maximum number of houses allowed for that day?

PRUSH is more like bid matching that SORUSH. I think it's less stress on the PNM in the long run.

Yes, unless their total number of invites is less than that.

But if you kept track of your rankings, wouldn't you be able to figure out who invited you back from your invite list? I mean, if I ranked ABC and XYZ number one and DE number two and I was invited to XYZ and DE, then wouldn't it make sense that ABC cut me?

Honestly, the debate seems rather academic to me. At a bigger school especially, PRUSH just makes more sense. It'd be far more efficient.

(edited for clarification and typos)

To an extent that is true. But in your case, if you ranked ABC and XYZ number one and DE number two, and were only allowed to go back to two houses, if you went back to ABC and XYZ, you wouldn't know whether or not DE invited you back.

However, since you ranked them last, you probably wouldn't care too much. ;)

I think SORUSH is nice for the schools that can do it, because it allows the "Decline with interest" option for an invitation, but PRUSH is simply more efficient and easier for schools with a lot of rushees coming through (and especially for schools like mine where rush is during school and most of Panhel has things, like, oh, classes to worry about).

It seems like PRush would be really hard on a PNM at a big school like Georgia because she'd spend forever trying to rank 18 houses she only saw briefly--trying to remember which was which--and then maybe half of them would cut her and there went all that effort for nothing.

How awful to be a SORUSH PNM who was cut from all the houses but 2 after the first round and have to see that the girl next to you got five more invites than the seven she's allowed to accept. It hard enough to keep your chin up after being severely cut. Why make the inevitable contrast between popular and unpopular PNMs even more pronounced than it needs to be? The popular PNM will be fine whether she knows that her least favorite houses invited her back or not; it's the cut ones I think we ought to be worried about.

Ivy

When I went through recruitment, we had seven chapters and used PRUSH. Now, there are ten chapters and they use SORUSH.

I don't know which is better--- I was able to rank the chapters according to my liking at the end of each day-- we would leave the houses and make notes to ourselves; there were clearly chapters that stood out from others to each PNM. As a PX, my school has switched programs and used SORUSH, and I remember it seemed like a bit of an unnecessary exercise to have to assemble to PNM's very early in the morning to give them their invites, have them determine which they would accept, turn the invites back in, and get a schedule to give them 4 hours later.

PRUSH worked well for me as a PNM--- I ranked the chapters as I saw them-- if I wasn't invited back, I knew I had been cut, and there were chapters I ranked a little lower on that list that I would attend. I think SORUSH can have pros and cons-- you get to choose from a list of "sure things" as to where you want to go, but with PRUSH you are truly ranking the chapters in YOUR order of preference.

NPC does not advocate using a priority rush system b/c it encourages the ranking of sororities as well as unreasonable expectations among the PNMs about where they'll be invited back. That being said, I went through a priority rush system and my college tried using an invitation system my junior year. It was a nightmare with the tight schedule we adhere to during recruitment. Panhellenic went back to priority rush the next year.

I don't know....when i rushed at USC we had PRUSH, but at ASU we had SORUSH and I think it is hard. FOr girls who don't have an opinion yet, it makes it that much harder with the PRUSH idea, however if you know right away, its better because then you are able to rank the ones you don't like lower and those you loved higher....less work for you. I personally preferred SORUSH though!!

see choices then pick. Otherwise its just plain mean and left totatlly to random.

I think PRUSH is definitely better for the PNM. That way if Suzie So-So got cut from XYZ, the top house on campus, she can just tell her neighbor, Lacey Legacy, that she ranked them last, and it's fine she's not going back.

I've heard a lot of stories about heartbreaks for girls who had SORUSH - other girls in their PX group, or even their PX, were mean to them because of where they did/didn't get invited back to.

We had PRUSH and I think I totally prefer it on all counts.

After parties when you rank, generally there are only a few (3-4) that you are dying to go back to, so they get put at the top. A house that is, say, 7th or 8th out of your 12 choices isn't as big a deal to you. Generally PNM's aren't struggling with the choice between the 7th and 8th ranking knowing that they only get invited back to 7 the next day. Meaning, they aren't there fretting over "What if I get my other top choices and tomorrow I want #8 instead of #7?" (Did that make a lick of sense?! It did in my head! :) ) So you come back the next day and there are your houses. Done.

My biggest problem with SORUSH is that it paves the way for "tent talk", preconceived notions and hurt PNMs. Say ABC is not that strong a house numbers wise or in terms of "coolness", but full of wonderful girls and a great sisterhood. Also, XYZ the reigning top chapter doesn't cut for anything after round 1 but grades. So, Patty PNM goes through Round 1, thinks the ABC girls are great and the XYZ's fine, but not her type. She goes home for the night and has dinner with some of her friends who are also rushing. They all talk about how "cool" XYZ is and how they hated being doubled rushed at ABC and their house is so small!!! The next morning Patty gets her invites and has been invited back to both ABC and XYZ. She really liked ABC, but her friends were saying all that stuff about them last night, and well, XYZ is the best and they asked me back - and she goes to XYZ declining ABC. At the end of that night she thinks XYZ is awesome (they are great rushers after all!) and the next day finds out she was not invited back because she wasn't a 500th generation leagcy with a 4.0, beauty queen title and 5 years of community service. She thinks she's a loser and drops out and ABC lost out on a great NM.

Now, I know this is an extremely exaggerated story, but I think you get my drift. I think letting girls pick lends to picking for superficial reasons. Also, I don't see how seeing who invited you back first makes you realize more where you fit in? So XYZ, the "cool" house didn't invite me back. Well, in PRUSH, even if I DID put them first, if they didn't invite me back they wouldn't be on my next round party list and that would pretty much clue me in that it's not the place for me...:confused: Right?

xo_kathy, I'm glad we share a name, because you just explained what I wanted to in a much better fashion. :)

Ditto XO_Kathy. Oh, and ADPIUCF, I'm pretty sure we've swithed back to PRUSH at UCF. I remember seeing the name of the program on the lists we had, and the way PRUSH works totally aligns with the way an advisor described the process PNM's go thorugh.

Sherbertlemons,

Oh thank god for the current Recruitment Counselors--- do you know how horrid it was to be stuck in a hotel off campus from everyone, have to be dressed and ready to go at 7:30 AM for rankings and then be on campus ALL day with no food until 10 PM? The Student Union loved us-- and so did Kelsey's Pizza at the end of the day!!!

Here is a true SORUSH story from my friend who rushed at a large, competitive campus:

"Jenny" is a very straightforward, urban, feminist intellectual type who also happens to be very beautiful. She feels very much at home at a couple of the chapters on her campus, FFF and GGG, where this attitude is cultivated. Because these chapters do not party very hard and have some less beautiful members, they are not especially selective. AAA, however, is the golden chapter on campus, incredible rushers, 100% return rates, notoriously difficult to get into. Jenny thinks the AAA's seem kind of shallow.
When Jenny gets her invites back, she is the only one in her rush group who is invited back to AAA. The other rushees ooh and aah, express jealousy, shower her with congratulations, etc. Jenny is so flattered that she goes to AAA's party.
This same scene is repeated every morning all week. AAA keeps inviting Jenny back, and the other rushees are in awe and tell her she's insane to think of regretting their parties. Jenny (foolishly, but understandably) is so seduced by this compliment from the campus queens and admiration from her friends that she ends up choosing AAA over FFF and GGG.
Jenny ends up disliking her pledge sisters, who seem ditzy and catty to her. She starts cutting meetings and eventually quits. She was a rotten AAA, even though she would have been a great FFF or GGG.
I honestly think Jenny would never have been an AAA but for SORUSH. If she had ranked the chapters after the first parties, AAA would have been low on her list. She was only interested in AAA because she was seduced by that coveted invitation! Not many 17-year-old girls have the strength of character to resist the temptation of that kind of flattery. PRUSH commits them to the more honest choices they make when they are not under the influence of feeling "chosen" by the campus queens.

Ivy

PRUSH has a lot of room for error (we use a scan tron). My rush card for instance got dropped from the entire system (it said I did not want to go back to any of the chapters) and they could not change when they realized it did not work out (invites back were already given out).

I am sure errors occur with both systems, but mine really sucked and broke my heart about the error so much I went shopping on bid day and found out later I had a snap bid. I got back in time to relucantly take it and made the best decision of my life.

But doesn't that only work if the PNMs can't talk to each other before they rank the chapters? Wouldn't tent talk still influence their opinions and lead women to rank the campus queens chapter higher than other chapters.

There's a difference between hearing tent talk that favors the queens and the feeling of knowing that the queens have chosen YOU and asked YOU back even though they cut all your friends. It's the flattery element that I think is especially hard to resist. It's kind of like getting into Harvard...even if it wasn't your first choice when you sent out your applications, it's really really hard to turn down that acceptance that makes you feel so special.

Ivy

Well, your Panhel should have done something about that! I know that with the scantrons there are problems, but all the ones at my campus were always corrected. Girls would show up at your party without being on the list because they had put you down, you had invited them, but there was a glitch that had been brought to Panhel's attention and taken care of. Might screw up your rotation, but at least you got back a girl you liked!!!

GeekyPenguin - no problem! I'm always willing to help a Kathy!!! ;)

YES - If 1st round is 7 groups, they rank all 7. Then as Round 2 visits only 5 houses, she would visit the top 5 houses that didn't drop her from Round 1.

So if invited to all 7 - she would go back to her top 5

So if dropped by #1 & #4, she would go to 2,3,5,6,7

If dropped by 3,4,5 - she would go to 1,2,6,7


(Just a simple way of describing it....)

They definitely switched back from when I went through this year. I think that I like this way better than the one that you described.

Okay, I know this is an old topic, but we're thinking of switching to PRUSH. I've heard the pros about it (eliminating tent talk,etc.) but I'm not sure how it will actually play out. How does it tend to affect the individual sororities? Is it beneficial to both larger and smaller sororities?

It's new to me, since I went through SORUSH, and any advice would be very helpful!

The way rush works here is that the girls get invites after Open house to novelty round, they can recieve up to 6, but may only accept/accept with regret to 4...they must cut 2 if they are given the max. number of bids. Then for final parties girls may recieve 4 invites but only accept/accept with regret to 2. Those 2 houses have her placed somewhere on their bid list. It is then up to her to either a) single itention prefernece (we use the term suicide here, even though NPC doesn't) b) rank all 6 houses (which we encourage because it often happens that girls who get the "dont match" call get offered bids to other houses) or c) rank the two houses they preferenced at.

SIP is HUGE here, even though it is looked down upon by us PX's and strongly discouraged in rush literature. But it has worked out well for every chapter, I'd venture to say at least 1/2 my chapter suicided my chapter or another one and ended up in TD.

The exact same thing happened to me....luckily I got snapped into my 1st choice!

At my school we used PRUSH. We ranked the houses at the end of the each day, and the beginning of the next day were given a list of our schedule for that day. You ranked the houses you liked best as 1 (8 houses the first day, 4 the second, etc.) and the others as 2, 3, 4, etc. If one of your top houses didn't invite you back, you could have gone to your 2, 3, or 4th depending.

While SORUSH has its benefits, I could see problems with large schools with a lot of houses in working out schedules, etc.

Also, it was hard enough on girls who didn't have full schedules on days. I would see it being even harder to have to look at Julie who got invited back to all 13 when you only were invited back to 7 or 8.

Oh goodness... perhaps I'm just heartless, but is it really that big of a deal if the girl next to you has 10 invites and you only have 4? Maybe I just have this opinion because my school had SORUSH and it seemed to work fine for us. There was a Miss Teen USA candidate in one of our recruitment groups... a week after Miss Teen USA was televised. Everyone knew who she was, the houses loved her. And you know what? At the end of the week, she ended up in one house just like the rest of us. Does it matter how you get to that one house? I would hope PNMs are strong enough to realize that the girl next to them isn't better just because she has more invites...

Sad but true...

It would be great if people didn't care about the number of invites, etc. However, I did know a lot of girls who were cut heavily in rush and it hurts. Both SORUSH and PRUSH have this problem.

How did I miss this when we first discussed it? It's so true! It happens soooo often.

as a Rho Chi this year, it was really heartbreaking to see the reactions of some of the girls when they got their invites. SOme girls got invited to houses that were more "Selective" and went happily. Others were dismayed that they only had 2 or 3 invitations, where at least one girl in our group had an invite to all 6 houses after open house and 4 invites to final parties (that's the most you can get). But in the end, I think that girl may have ended up signing independent....and I know most of the girls who got 1 or 2 bids ended up getting their number 1 and are now actives. At the same time, I was really insulted when girls said to me, "pssh, Tau Delta, Why did they invite me back? they're the smallest on campus". And they immediately cut us (at the time it was me and that felt really bad, but you can't just say "HEY! That's not nice"). But we thrive on that attitude...the girls that we end up with CHOSE to be there, THEY chose, not us. It may mean not making quota, but we're OK with that.

I came in through informal, but I wouldn't want to go through SORUSH especially because of the group(s) that pick solely on looks. I mean, even though I would never ever have considered joining them, it still hurts to hear that you're not one of the best looking people...and still, it could hury in terms of other attributes when it's an obvious one-sided ranking. Not all chapters pick a whole package.

I think you should get to see SORUSH after rush, LOL. That way if any of the sisters in the sororities you didn't pick are ever mean to you you can say "well you liked me enough last semester to give me a bid, beeyotch! " :D

I totally agree with Ivy's example about why PRUSH is better. There was a rushee story on here a couple years ago in which the rushee kept getting asked back to the top group on campus but she cut them before final rounds because she just didn't feel comfy with them - even though her friends told her she was crazy to do so. Not everyone has that kind of self-assurance - especially if you're rushing before you've even really started college and don't know a soul.

Maybe I'd feel differently about all this if I had gone to a different school. Mizzou does bring in out of state students because of our journalism school, but for the most part, it seems like one of those places where if you don't know the PNM, you know someone who does. Seems kind of strange at such a large school, but I can honestly say there was not one house where I didn't know SOMEBODY when I went through recruitment... and there were a lot of other people in the same situation as me. Maybe that just made us comfortable with what was going on? Who knows.

we never ranked until the last day. Our recruitment wasn't that long so one day we would see all sororities (we only have 5) and then we get invited back, we chose 3 from there for house parties, then there is an ivitation again. You then pick 2 and go to pref. After pref you rank all sororites and it is bid matching. I think this system worked very well actually