Regret with Interest (Tip for sorority recruitment)
 

With sorority recruitment six to ten weeks away on many campuses, here's something that may be worth mentioning:

"regret with interest."

At some schools -- not all -- women have the option of "regretting with interest" when they need to decline an invitation to a party. How does this work?

Let's say there's a day where you can go to as many as seven parties. Let's say you have eight invitations. You have to pick one sorority to "regret." Now, at schools where you can "regret with interest," you can choose to say "regret with interest," which means, basically, "I'm still interested in you, and feel free to invite me to another party."

So if you truly are keeping an open mind, and feel that you might like to go to another party at that sorority, try the "regret with interest" option if your school allows it. It could help keep options open for you. Naturally you wouldn't use it with a sorority that you honestly are not interested in.

There are a few posts about "regret with interest" or "regrets with interest" in an older thread in the Rush forum entitled "NPC Rush - Can someting be done to reduce/eradicate the number of bidless rushees?"

How can you know if your school has the "regret with interest" option? They should tell you at the general recruitment orientation meeting, or at a meeting with your recruitment counselor. If you don't hear anything about it, ASK your recruitment counselor.

From the very first information session or encounter with the Greek Affairs Office, definitely ask if "regret with interest" is an option. If it is, I would definitely endorse using this option if you are still interested but cannot attend due to other invitations. You will never know what will happen in future rounds of recruitment and you will want to keep all options available! (But only, of course, if you feel comfortable and still interested in that certain group!)

Great idea in mentioning this, exlurker! It is a terrific option if it is available. Ole Miss used it for the first time in fall 2003. The result was incredible with ~92% of the PMs were placed. It did cause huge pledge classes in the 91-95 member range. (If these numbers keep up, expansion could be an option. However, that's another story for another thread.) OleMissGlitter could share more about this but she is at AOII Leadership Institute.

We have it at NCSU (or did) If you wanted to definetly drop a chapter you had to fill in the circle, other wise you wrote the name of the two groups you would pick to "skip" if you were asked back to all the possible "slots" for the day

We have had that option at Alabama for a while. I think it's great, and it seems like most girls end up with their first or second choice anyway.

Do they do this with Fraternities?

No, because fraternity recruitment is very informal and the men don't have to extend formal invitations, etc.

While I can see how this is a good idea, if I were the soroity, I think it might hurt a little...I mean it's like saying "Sorry, you're ok, but not THAT good..."

We did this at Troy State and it definitely works. I was a Panhellenic Exec Officer for one rush and a Rush Counselor the next. Although it can be confusing to the girls, it does allow them to keep their options open. It is also an indicator for the sororities who were regretted without interest to know that they don't have to keep a slot for this girl in future parties.

It can be very valuable at the big schools. It's hard for the PNMs to keep several groups straight at once and I've known of several who just marked down anything because they couldn't really remember which was which. Then when they went back to the parties, they realized that they'd cut groups they loved. At least with "regret with interest", they could still have a shot at them.

Not neccessarily. What if a PNM has to cut down from 3 to 2, but she loves ALL of them? Because's she's forced to cut one, she might flip a coin or something silly like that. It doesn't always mean that the group that got cut didn't meet her standard. Sorority women need to remember that PNMs are sometimes agonizing over these decisions are are probably really grateful for the "regret with interest" option.


.....Kelly :)

I wouldn't invite a "regret with interest" girl back.

Seems like "regret with interest" is only useful for showing you if the girl is NOT interested -- i.e. if there's a Chi O legacy going through and we're rushing her hard, but she's really ONLY interested in Chi O.

If she was that interested.... wouldn't she list my group?

I understand that sometimes you're forced to make choices, but really, don't the hard choices come when you're deciding if you want to put a group at #6 or #7 and you know you can only go to 6 parties the next day?

If a girl hasn't listed a group at the top of her list, they're probably not a good match. Rush isn't a perfect system, but it's what we have to work with right now, and it's worked pretty well so far.

I guess I just don't "get" the point of it.

I guess in looking at it, I know coming from a school that last recruitment has 3 chapters and one colony that regret with interest would have been beneficial. Unfortunately, yes, a decision has to be made, but recruitment at my school isn't like the others, it's not cut throat.

So for some women, regret with interest was a viable option. Especially with the colony, I know that many women were interested in the organization itself; however, the colony had a weak first recruitment (which was totally understandable), so this way, it allowed both the woman and the org to realize that a possible match would occur.

Also, I know coming from a small school and a small recruitment, that the orgs are still learning that just because a woman does not return for skit night, doesn't mean you can't invite her for preference. So a "regret with interest" is just the PNM way of saying yes, I'm still interested, and may then give the group that push to continue to invite her back.

It would be interesting to find out how many women ended up joining an org that continued to invite them back, although that women had initially not returned to their recruitment? I know that's how our school's Greek Advisor got her org and it's a great example for both sisters and PNM.


**Again, I am coming from a small school standpoint, I could see, at a school with a lot of groups a woman, desperate to find somewhere to join, could regret with interest to all the groups that didn't invite her back.

Unless perhaps it's the first day, and the girl is so flustered that they all just sort of run together (I never went through Formal, so I can only guess). Maybe she can't remember whether it was Chi Omega or Alpha Chi Omega where the vibe seemed good but she didn't have enough time to decide for sure.

Or.... if perhaps you just get a bad rusher. Say Suzy PNM has 4 parties on Day 2, and can only go back to 3 tomorrow:

ABC
DEF
GHI
JKL

She loves ABC but doesn't think she'll make their cut for whatever reason. They are first and foremost, and she likes the 3 others equally. But she has to cut one, and JKL's rusher seemed like she didn't have her brain on this morning, though the rest of the girls seemed nice. So she puts down ABC, DEF, GHI and regrets JKL with interest, because she wants to be invited back if she gets cut from ABC.

Turns out.... she does get cut from ABC. Now JKL can invite her back, even though she cut them, because she did so "with interest", right?

(like I said, we never did Formal, so I'm only guessing by all the talk I've read here on GC over the years.)

This is why it worked this past year (the first time) at Ole Miss. There will be Potential New Members who come through recruitment thinking they only want a certain sorority or sororities. They will get asked back to first and second round by that sorority and then that sorority will release the PNM. Therefore, if the PNM who has regretted with interest still has options. Believe it or not most girls come to Ole Miss thinking they are going to be in a certain sorority and once they go through recruitment and meet new girls in other houses their minds might change. This also allows women who were normally released out of recruitment because they couldn't regret with interest before this past year.

Side Note: At Ole Miss each house gets their Regret with Interest list the night before Pref party invitiations go out, and each house does not have to extend an invitation to third round to the PNMs who regretted with interest. It can take some time going through your regret lists depending on how many regrets you got, but it does work. I think it does work and it seemed sort of scary last year when Panhellenic was talking about it and everything last year but after seeing how it worked it was wondering.

The University of Southern Miss in Hattiesburg, MS has been using it also, I think this will be there 3rd year using it.

The way everybody is describing regretting with interest it would be a very useful tool. However, at my school it hasn't really worked that well. It does help some chapters to be able to invite girls to later parties who had earlier regretted. The problem is that most girls regret with interest to every house. I know I did. I didn't want to hurt a house's feelings so I regretted with interest even houses I had no interest in. I think maybe our Rho Chis did not explain it properly to us.

Regret with Interest Can Work
 

APhi Sailorgirl- that happened with a friend of mine's sister. She went undercover for the school paper and when sororities found out about this, many of them cut her in fear of her saying something bad about them.

At Kent you go from 6 to 4 sororities and many girls were encouraged to cut "regret with interest." Anyway, she cut Tri-Sigma that way and they ended up being the only sorority that invited her back. My friend tells me that this girl is one of the strongest sisters in the chapter.

I think this can be especially useful for after the first day - say you have to cut from 15 to 10, and you know you don't want to go back to houses 14 or 15, but you think houses 11, 12, and 13 would be okay - you just slightly prefer houses 1-10 right now, after 15-20 minutes of conversation.

We have this option at Mississippi State, too. It works well on behalf of the chapters as well. If one chapter say has a not so great return rate after one party, then they can reinvite girls that "regretted with interest" back to the next party. This gives the girls another look at the house, and also gives the sorority a chance to have the same size parties as the others. As a panhellenic officer last year, I know we really encouraged girls to use this option just in case they were released by their top choices!

I think the "regret with interest" sounds like a great option.

For one, it would help to eliminate problems getting cut from all of their choices, even if they were interested in others that they had to cut. Also, if you're at a school where on Open House you see 14 houses in one day, none for more than 20 minutes, you might not really know what sororities to choose and have to just randomly pick X amount of parties to attend. I think it's great to keep the options open...

We had it when I went through rush, and then the following year we changed to SORUSH, so it was N/A.

What I don't understand, is if you are a PNM, wouldn't you regret every sorority with interest? It seems like it would be a good way to insure more invites.

Maybe not though -- one of the chapters that consistently had the most members I would NEVER have agreed to join.

They had some lovely girls, but the majority I just would NOT have fit in with. And I knew that, and knew I'd be miserable there.

bump for 2006!

Our regret with interest is different than what you have all been writing.

I was a swimmer my freshman year and had to miss 2 days of recruitment because of meets (gasp) and I thought I was done for.

The first day I missed (day 1 of recruitment) there were no cuts I or the sororities made, so we simply had an absence with an excuse (I was in a pool, swimming my botty off).

The second day I missed (day 3 of recruitment) I had to cut the sororities I was invited back to down to 3 (you were invited back to at most four, I was invited back to 2). On this day, I regretted with interest to the two sororities on my list, and listed both (meaning I didn't want to cut either).

Our regrets with interest mean you cannot be there, but are still interested in the group. You can simply regret to other groups, but most women don't want to do that.

As a recruitment director, I would feel upset that a group rejected me, even if they still had interest in me. I could see where it might be useful at some schools, but we use the percentages of women returning back from the last year to determine how many each sorority can invite back. (there is a technical term for this, but is escaping me right now :) )

I guess I'm on the fence post about it... useful, but I would have hurt feelings :o

Do you have them on speed-dial??

We used to do "regret with interest" at UCF-- it started the year after I went through recruitment. I can't remember if my girls were able to do it the year I was a recruitment counselor... so it may not have lasted long! ZTAngel, did you get to do it that year?

Either way, don't worry about it. Keep your options open and remember that UCF makes a very strong effort to place the women at recruitment with a sorority-- so long as you are open to the fact that it may not be your #1, 2 or 3 choice-- there are still great opportunities out there to get involved with the UCF sorority system. They're all great chapters; most are over 100 members! And as I've said before-- surely you can find your niche in a group of women that size! :)

Recruitment will be here before you know it. I'm so excited to see the outcome for our 2006 PNMs!

I'm glad to see a PNM getting the facts straight rather than going by Greek Chat gospel, actually!

Yes, but would they not give her that same answer during rush orientation (or whatever UCF calls it)?? It's great to be enthusiatic...it's creepy to stalk the Greek life office.

They sure would, but there are recruitment counselors staffing the UCF Office of Greek Life all summer to process applications and to take phone calls from PNMs and parents.

Also, in my experience, the UCF recruitment counselors were trained more on how to prevent heat exhaustion than fielding important questions and scenarios-- like what to do if a PNM shows up late to the party? (Correct Answer: Send her into the party!). So if they start getting phone calls like these now, they'll be better equipped in the field during recruitment week and at Greek Forum. And while they're in the office-- they're there to work and answer questions!

At Otterbein, we have "accept with regret". Since our parties are on weekends during the school year, some girls have to work/participate in "insert extra curricular here". While my honest opinion is that since the dates are given to girls when they sign up for recruitment in fall quarter they should try to schedule around those blocks of time, I know that this is not always possible for one reason or the other (religious observance, night class, whatever). After open house, you can recieve up to 6 invites, but only accept 4. If, for whatever reason, you cannot make it to the party of one of your remaining 4, you mark "accept with regret". This COUNTS AS ONE OF YOUR 4 PARTY CHOICES. Same goes for final party, only accept or accept w/ regret 2 out of a possible 4.

With having a later recruitment, accept w/ regret doesn't hurt the PNM as much as a fall recruitment, I think, since an active sister probablly knows the PNM from campus or has heard of her through campus activities, plus the connection/introduction at open house.

We didn't have the option of Regret with Interest when I went through Recruitment, but I think it was between the second & third parties, I just couldn't make up my mind between two for "also rans" (I had already pegged my top one and two). So, I wrote on the invitation - knowing that they would see it, not a computer - that I would love to get to know the XYZ's more, but am torn. I actually did get an invitation to their party!

Mods, if that's inspiring anarchy on the system, please feel free to delete this post!