Snap bids
 

I tend to think that snap bids usually take the form of a chapter realizing that they cut themselves out, so they go back and snap someone who was near the top of the release list from the last round.

I wouldn't think the group would try to snap bid a girl who cut them or girl who dropped out when they were still on her party list because it would just seem pointless.

Can anyone tell me how it usually really works?

Thank you for answering. I think that's it, but I think PNMs can also be extended snap bids if they drop out of rush.

I was curious about how things tend to really happen with snap bids, rather than what was possible.

I'm wondering if snap bids are essentially used more to get girls back who the group cut or to give girls who cut the group a second chance, which doesn't seem like it would often work.

Well, one of those points is sort of why I'm asking.

If the snap bid comes from a group that cut you, there's a strong chance the girls would eagerly take a snap bid.

In the cases in which the girl cut them, I wouldn't think it would be a successful way for the group to get to quota very often, and yet, snap bid are given and accepted.

Well, I don't really have any experience knowing how people actually got their bids.

But I think that when I hear reports of groups snap bidding up to quota, I think that they are offering bids to people they previously released because many of the girls who cut them would have either matched to other groups or still want to stand by their first cut.

I'm hoping that someone will step forward and mention cases that they know of at any school. It's weird though because the people who really would know probably don't feel comfortable talking about it because on some level it's MS. I'm kind of hoping for friend of a friend stories that people heard from girls who got snap bids.

ETA: Especially with the new release figures, there'd be a lot of girls out there that the group released who, if they didn't make quota through regular bid matching, they'd probably love to see again.

Maybe snap bidding has changed, but when I was in school (at Ohio University), snap bids came after everyone else recieved thier bids. So if a girl did not get a bid and was available for a snap bid, all the sororities had to wait until after a certain time. Then it could be a mad scramble to the doors of the available girls.

For us, the most successful snap bids were to girls who had a friend in the newest new member class. I remember one brand new new member being pulled off the lawn on bid day by someone from membership selection to go and offer a snap bid to her best friend (who had cut us after 2nd parties). 10 minutes later the best friend was on our lawn in letters and ended up being a great addition.

I guess you have to remember that sometimes a girl will cut ABC sorority not because she hated them, but because she can only go to so many parties, and ABC might be 4th on her list, and she can only go to 3.

Thank you both so much for answering, and especially KSUViolet for providing so much information.

It certainly seems likely that a lot of snap bids work that way. I'm still interested to hear if they go the same way now.

Any maybe in a lot of cases it'd be too complicated to go back and offer a girl you released a bid. I'm tending to think in terms of girls the group liked but were below the few they could keep with releases. But maybe retroactively there's no way to know why someone was released: maybe they were released purely on numbers, maybe they were released because they were skanky. Nobody would want to take a chance on getting that wrong.

I've never been a membership chair or adviser of any sort, so I really don't know. I think I was probably happier as a undergraduate member not knowing any more than I did.

I was having a hard time figuring out how I was was hearing stories about more group having to snap to quota. Certainly, girls with a lot of invitations after first round do probably cut groups they like, it was just surprising that "enough" girls who had those kind of results were bidless after the whole thing.

I don't know much about snap bidding, but I kind of remember years ago that ASU snap bidding occured right after official bids were given to the girls (but maybe not opened yet, I shrug my shoulders). I remember the girls getting a list and seeing if there was a girl that they wanted to snap bid.

Question: If a PNM drops can she still be snap bidded? What about a chapter just offering her a bid in the first place?

I've heard, through the greek grapevine while I was in college, that some PNM's would drop. They were legacies and they did try to rush but they really just wanted to go their legacy house, so they dropped. In the end the legacy house "picked them up". Can that happen?

Hey, as I like to point out, I'm no expert. But I'm pretty sure girls who dropped out of rush CAN be snap bid, at least at Georgia.

In the example about girls from the legacy houses, do you mean that the legacy chapters cut the girls but then didn't make quota so they gave bid to the girls, OR are you asking that even though the legacy house made quota they gave them bids?

In the first example, sure I think the groups could give bids to anyone without one; in the second example, I think they might be able to if they weren't at chapter total, but they'd have to wait until after the end of everyone else's snapping to quota, I think. But if they were at quota and chapter total, I don't think they could.

I think that there are different systems here because I know of people who recieved snap bids after dropping themselves out of RUSH. The house liked them so much that they offered a snap bid to the girl, the girl dropped out of RUSH right before Pref Night.

Sorry, that I wasn't clear :D

What I mean is the legacy drops out of rush because she knows that she only wants to join her legacy house and doesn't want any of the others.

More curious if a girls, legacy or not, can receive a snap bid for dropping out of rush.

It also depends on whether the campus guarantees bids. At the campus where I advise Becky would be guaranteed a bid at ABC or XYZ because she maximized her options.

Snap bids, again at the campus where I advise, are offered to girls who A) dropped from recruitment and expressed an interest in snap bids during their exit interview or B) missed the formal recruitment deadline and expressed an interest in continuous open recruitment.

That is COB. Snap Bids are done as KSUViolet and ASUADPi said right after bid matching. Usually, it is before everyone disperses with the final list The only people who would really know if Sally Sue is a snap bid are the people in the room at the time and Sally Sue. She'll get her bid with everyone else and if she or other people say nothing, no one will ever know that she is a snap bid.

what aopirose said is correct. directly after bid matching, while everyone is still in the room (at least at my campus), we look at any unmatched women and see if those that did not make quota want to snap bid them. If someone is snap bid, it's often not a chapter they listed, although it could happen (if bid matching stops before all chapters meet quota except a couple and some women are left bidless due to how the process works).

If it's a chapter the woman did not list, Panhel would call and say "you did not receive a bid from the chapters on your list, but ABC wants to offer you a bid." ABC advisor may be present during that call and talk to the woman if she has any questions. The woman comes to sign her bid card before bid day festivities begin (if all works out well) and no one but the advisors know she was given a snap bid. I've only seen this done if the woman is on the chapter's bid list OR was really liked and ended up dropping out of recruitment. I'd assume the chapter would have discussed this possibility at some point during MS.

Here, women usually only self-release if they are sick, something serious happens (family related), they have a previous committment they cannot miss or they're called into work. They do not drop out with the hopes of getting a snap bid (usually 2 out of 3 chapters make quota).

In the example mentioned earlier of a legacy dropping out b/c she only wants her legacy house and just wants a snap bid at the end, she would be taking a SERIOUS risk. If that chapter gets to quota, she is screwed. The chapter could not hold open a spot for her during the bid matching process, even if they really wanted to offer her a bid.

I hope that makes sense. Let me know if it doesn't. There's a lot more detail that can be added, but I didn't want it to be too much info.

So is snap bidding different than quota additions? For example, quota was 58, but ABC actually takes 63. So are the 5 extra girls quota additions or snaps bids?

(sorry the pun, but this is all greek to me :D )

Your example would be quota additions. Quota additions happen when ther are women who have maximized their options throughout recruitment (i.e. attends 3 preference parties and ranks all 3 chapters) and they end up bidless at the end of bid matching. Quota additions are to match as many women as possible. A PNM will never know if she was a quota addition or not.

Snap bids are for chapters who did not make quota at the end of bid matching. They will have a snap bidding list composed of women who released them or dropped out of recruitment that either the Panhellenic Association or the Rho Gammas will call to offer a bid. This takes place before bid day festivities and she will open an envelope like everyone else.

CR(continuous recruitment) happens after bid day and chapters that either did not make quota or who did make quota and are under total can hold informal recruitment events and offer bids.

Snap bidding procedure really does seem to vary from campus to campus. At the school where I went to undergrad, we were given a list from panhellenic of the girls who either dropped out of rush or did not get a bid after bid matching. We then went through the list, decided who we would be willing to offer a snap bid to and had a member call them to offer them a bid. We did the calls after bid matching (so if they didn't get a bid, they had already been notified by their Rho Chi and usually given a heads up that they might receive calls from sororities offering snap bids) but before the actual bid day activities. So if a girl accepted our snap bid, we told her to come to the bid day field and she would have a bid card waiting for her. The only people who knew that she was a snap bid were the members who were on the snap bidding team and panhellenic.

At the campus where I was an adviser, my chapter didn't ever have to snap bid so I'm not quite as familiar with the procedure but I know it was very different from what we did at my undergrad school. Instead of the chapter members being responsible for contacting the women who were eligible for snap bidding, the greek advisers called them and let them know that XYZ was offering them a bid. What I'm not sure about is how it worked when there were multiple chapters offering a snap bid to the same girl. I believe the greek adviser would let them know that XYZ and ABC were both offering her a snap bid, but don't quote me on that...

These answers explain why you wouldn't really know how it worked unless you actually did bid matching or were the one who extended the snap bid. Thank you for explaining.

But in almost all of these examples, it seem like the only way that a girl might get a snap bid from a chapter that cut her would be in she dropped out of rush (which makes sense because if she continued, she would probably have matched with someone else).

Those of you who did snap bidding as advisers or bid matching teams, can you think of cases in which you gave a snap bid to a girl who you cut? (Not to be too darkly cynical, but isn't this where the stories about "computer glitches" usually have their origins?)

At my school, I know a girl who cut a sorority before preference, didn't get a bid from either of the houses she preffed, and got a snap bid from the house she cut. The house that got her decided to give her the snap bid after they saw that her best friend would be in the house. She got her bid card with everyone else and happily went off to her house.

I can think of one case from my undergraduate chapter where we gave a snap bid to a girl we had cut (although she ended up declining anyway.) But the reason I remember it was because it ended up being a bit of a "situation" in the chapter - basically the snap bidding team decided to offer the girl a bid because they had liked her even though she had been released by the chapter. But that definitely isn't how it's supposed to happen and we were chewed out by our chapter consultant for that one because we are not supposed to snap bid women who we have released. That might vary by sorority though so I can't speak for everyone.

As for the success of snap bidding...most of the women who I've seen picked up through snap bids (and actually accepted) were women who had dropped out of recruitment right before preference or decided not to sign their pref card and then had a change of heart the next day and were regretting their decision.

Do you think it happens more often when you only have 2 chapters at pref? We preffed 3 chapters because we had a bigger greek system, but I don't think I even knew what a snap bid was until my daughter went to college. I don't ever remember it happening in our sorority, but we also didn't (and still don't) have a quota system like most schools. But it would seem that just by adding that one more chapter to pref, you would have a lot more chances of matching as many girls as possible. (Keep in mind, I had a major with no math required ;) )

I am all about quota additions! Somewhere on GC I started a thread about how we could maximize Greek membership--it kills me that we lose so many top girls during recruitment--but I like that girls who maximize their options are getting bids from 1 of their 3 preffed groups. Back in the day, so many women went to 2 prefs and were crosscut...:(

Yes, I agree that being able to pref an additional group and quota additions are great!

The way I see it, quota additions don't do any real harm to the groups because if someone didn't pref at your house, you couldn't/shouldn't have much realistic expectation that a pnm is interested in your group. AND it's such an incentive for the girls to keep an open mind and list all the groups.

Sure there are a few girls who are removed from the possibility of snap bids for the smaller groups, but since the process is theoretically about mutual selection, I don't know that blocking a group that the girl did pref in favor of a group that she didn't is exactly "fair" to her, for lack of a better word.

Girls just need to be really careful about being ready to join any of the groups on the bid card.

It's really peculiar to me how little I can remember about how we actual got our members when I was in school, not that I'd want to discuss the details of membership selection here anyway, but really I'm almost a complete blank slate. I did pledge later, so I didn't do it three years that everyone else would, but other than a few contentious situations with particular girls, nada.

I have 4 kids, so my excuse is that I am missing some major brain cells!:D

OMG, NUBlue&Blue, I just came in from cleaning up the back yard and accidentally deleted part of your post in trying to quote you. I am so sorry. :(

No problem....I think I said that I couldn't really remember anything either until my daughter went to college because I moved away, didn't do anything with my sorority, got married, had a bunch of kids and got busy.

The more we talked about things when she was going through rush and after she pledged, the more things I started to remember.

But I think I did qualify it by saying that I probably won't remember everything because I have lost a lot of brain cells.;)

OK, I have a dumb question and I might get too far into ritual/membership selection, so forgive me if I do.

When I was in school we did the same thing ForeverRoses did - found out who didn't get matched and then it was a mad dash to get to their door before another sorority did. Since we were not a large school - we, as a chapter, knew all the girls who were going to be on our bid list. So if we saw Rosie Rushee didn't get matched and we knew she was on our bid list, we were running to get her.

But some people mentioned giving snaps to girls they cut or who cut them - sometimes way before pref. How would that fly? Would the whole chapter have to revote on her, or would they go back to the votes cast on whether to keep her at the last invitational party she was at to decide whether to offer her a bid?

I know what we did, but we were fairly small - what does a large chapter do? I mean, even if there's 1000 rushees and 200 girls in the chapter, if a rushee came through that NOBODY liked, could she conceivably end up on the snap bid list just to fill quota/total?

I think it would depend WHY the sorority had cut the girl - sometimes you (the GLO) have to do the equivilent of "regret with interest" - and those girls (the ones who were cut only for the sake of numbers) would be eligible for snap bids. Girls who were cut for other criteria (grades, personality, whatever) would not be. This is based on my experience as an advisor which was over 15 years ago, so it may not be true for all.

33Girls, that's part of what I was wondering too. I guess the people who would do the snap bidding are also the ones who know why people were released?

But again, I'm not sure how often it's the case that the girls who get snapped were cut by the group.

I don't know of anyone getting snap bid before the end of rush.

Back in my day, when we didn't have release figures, snap bidding was pretty rare. If we had cut someone, then it was because we really didn't want them as a sister. However, if you have to cut a lot of women due to release figures, I can see how a chapter could end up cutting some women that they really did like.

From experience, snap bidding can be very successful. On UGA's campus it is pretty much a necessity and I would say that about 1/3 of the groups take part in snap bidding. NPC lets the houses who didn't make quota know their bid list and they give them the list of bidless women. This list includes women the group dropped, women who dropped out of recruitment but checked a box on their resignation forms to leave them on the list, and women who dropped the group. Then it is pretty much a free for all to call the women and offer them bids. It all depends who reaches them first which group gets the bidless women. A women who suicided is ineligible for QUOTA ADDITIONS but not for snap bidding. They want everyone to find a home. I know they woke us up on bid at 6:45 am to start making snap bid phone calls.

Hahaha, there is NO SUCH THING as a computer glitch...only user error.

Without getting too much into MS, many snap bids at Illinois were women who dropped out of rush. Keep in mind that schools with tons of chapters have GRUELING schedules, so there are plenty of women who drop out for reasons other than "didn't like invites".

Another type of snap bid went to women who did not participate in formal recruitment. Think of this as early COB, but if you could get the girl to sign a card on bid day and join the NM class, she would then be in the mix with everyone else, and she would be bound to your chapter for one year. The key here is that the girl would have to have been contacted after the FR deadline.

And yes, plenty of chapter abuse the privelege if they know they will be under total even if they make quota.

Wow. I had never even thought of this! It it allowed everywhere? It seems like it would be really helpful for chapters that appeal to and are willing to make contact with girls who would never consider going through formal rush. I always assumed you'd have to wait until after formal rush was completely over and you were having COB events. Do these kind of snap bid count against the fall rush quota?

Is that above type of snap bid allowed at UGA?

That wasn't considered a "snap bid" at our school. It was a COB. But the girls were called to show up on bid day so that no one would really know the difference. Occasionally we'd do this with someone we wanted to bid the previous semester but didn't get a chance before it was too late in the year.

It just seems like an amazing opportunity to get a lot of girls who would never do formal rush at a time of the year when it would be best for everyone to do it if most of your campus doesn't do COB or spring rush.

Did it count against your quota for the fall or just against chapter total? Could you do it if your graduating senior dropped you below total over the summer or only if you were below chapter total with all the senior members?

My only experience with snap bidding was on the side of the chapter and normally at my school (back in the day 8 years ago) this is what happened. PNMs had to pick 13chapters, 7chapters, 4 chapters, 2 chapters. A girl could rank ABC chapter as her choice for 3rd but only got to attend 2 parties so getting a bid was still something she might want from that chapter because it was still in her upper choices.

Yet again my experiences here are older though.

I know that snap bids on my campus were never offered if the chapter had dropped the girl for any reason EXCEPT numbers. If it was a case of her being dropped because someone felt she was not worthy of being in letters then she did not receive a snap bid from that chapter no matter what the quota situation was.