Out of state pnms
 

This is really for all posters.
Zillini, in a different thread in the last few days (dealing with difficulties of smaller chapters ) in discussing the use of release figures, you mentioned that ''There is less chance for those unknown "discovery" PNMs (especially out of state) to be invited back, someone who the chapter didn't know squat about before Recruitment ". In a thread from last winter there was a comment by one poster about a cousin pledging a sorority that was having problems because "It was her only shot at a sorority because she was from out of state."

Can you give any kind of realistic assessment about the difficulty of an out of state pnm being successful in recruitment at a large Southern school like Auburn or Florida? Will she get cut heavily because she is from out of state?

Should she just settle for what she can get?

actually
 

The post I referred to was in the Quota thread. Sorry . dazed and confused.

With the big SEC schools, it's not because those PNMs are from out of state so much as the sorority members have all these girls they know really well and would love to pledge. Out of staters really have to stand out.

I wrote a rec for an out of stater for Auburn rush yesterday and I hope we do get her! She's a real star and knows no one at Auburn.

Co-sign. I have friends from all over the country in my chapter and in other sororities. I remember last year there was a girl who went thru rush and was from a small town in Alaska and she recieved a bid. If you're from out of state it doesn't matter, just stand out in a good way and people will notice!

What she said.

We send references every year to SEC schools and hope our chapters will notice these outstanding young ladies from out of state but in reality the chances are slim to none. It's really a toss up. All I can say is that it is a win, win for every sorority. There are so many outstanding pnms and they really need to find the group perfect for them.

Given a cute girl with high grades, lots of activities, community service and recs(along with 1200 other girls that are cute with high grades.......etc.), will they cut her solely because she is from out of state?

From what I know (obviously I'm in a fraternity and not a sorority) there are some chapters at SEC schools which take a lot more out of state girls than others. And there are some who will only take out of state girls from within the SE (Georgia, SC and Virginia girls seem to do better as out-of-staters).

NO, but they will pick someone they know from home over someone unknown from out of state. It 's not really even intentional, but it is easy to relate (not the right word) to someone when you recognize her school name or the summer camp she went to was the same one you went to, etc. All comments above about the out of state pnm needing to stand out are right.

My advice to anyone going out of state - whether the rush is competitive or not - is always, always, always get recs. Recs cannot hurt and the more alum endorsements and letters an out of stater can have, IMO, the better. At the very least, this makes the chapter say, "Wow, we have a ton of correspondence on this pnm from Timbuktu. Let's get to know her."

Better the devil you know than the devil you don't!

It is just safer to pick girls you know a lot of times because you can better predict how they are going to react to college life and represent your chapter. It is easy to fool a group that you have been around for 4 hours in 1 week.

it can be done
 

:)I can only say from our experience...my girls went to a very large southern (not SEC) school, we never even thought about recs, except my legacy to ZTA, did not get "cut" from any groups, had a full schedule every round, and got their first choice sorority....I know that this is probably not the usual recruitment experience, but it can be done.

Maybe my rec theory is overkill (as evidenced by ZTA72's experience, which was a good one) but I think anyone who is in doubt at all could benefit from recs. That said, I realize I am heavily influenced by my SEC roots and the type of recruitments take place there.

Also, re Cracker Barrel's comment, I don't think any groups actually decide they are/ are not going to take large numbers of out of state girls, but that might fall under Membership Selection info for some groups and not be open for discussion.

From what I've noticed it tends to be houses which are good but not the absolute top that end up with a lot of girls who would have been in the top houses had they been from in-state.

I'd say that would be very likely and makes sense. I just don't think they go into recruitment with the plan to pledge a lot of out of staters.

Wow, a comment from me prompted a whole new thread. I'm flattered. :)

I want to make sure everyone understands exactly what I was saying that prompted this. My point was that with the Release Figure system, large successful chapters are required to make big cuts early on. Often these chapters look for easy cuts, such as GPA and not having a Rec. Out-of-state PNMs that nobody knows can be considered an easy cut. Why? Because nobody knows the girl well enough to fight for her.

All I'm saying is this can be one of the drawbacks of system. These successful chapters don't have the luxury of large numbers of invites to each round. Therefore harsh decisions must be made early with little information and they simply don't have time to get to know some of the out-of-state girls.

Having said that I'm not going to say it's impossible for an out-of-state PNM to get a bid at a highly competitive SEC school, but there are obstacles to overcome if she doesn't know a soul on campus or in the chapter. She needs to make herself "known" before recruitment starts. Recs are vital, in general the more the better from alums who know her well. This tells the chapter "Ya'll might not know her, but here's a slew of your alum sisters who do. She's a great person, would be an asset to the chapter and you should get to know her!"

Also at Bama there's a spring Panhellenic weekend, basically a meet and greet for actives and all upcoming fall PNMs. This would require travel for out-of-state PNMs, but it's a great way to become "known". Do other campuses have something similar? Bama has been doing this for maybe a decade now. Every year the number of PNMs and their parents attending gets larger and larger. That first year I remember there was maybe a couple of dozen. This last spring there were several hundred. (Sorry, I don't recall exactly how many.)

Things may be different now, but I can share my experience from the late 80s--early 90s. I rushed at a big state school. I was an out-of-state student. I pledged what was considered a "top" sorority. I had a full card for all the rounds and so had to "regret" a few houses each round.

We had a deferred rush, so the first round was in November or December, Panhel cut for grades, and then we came back a week early in January to complete rush.

My high school boyfriend's mom was in a sorority in college. She offered to organize my recs the summer before school started. My parents weren't greek in college, and I knew nothing about rush. I accepted her offer mostly to be polite since it seemed like something she really wanted to do. She called around to all of her friends, and believe it or not, recruited 17 women to write recommendations. There were 19 sororities on my campus.

I had no idea how valuable those recs would be. At my campus, if an alumnae wrote a rec for a girl before rush started, the house invited her over for formal dinner. I had the opportunity to meet girls in each of the 17 houses I had recs for -- even before rush began. I also met a senior from the house I eventually pledged (ZTA) in one of my activities classes. She invited me over for dinner, too. So I went there twice during the fall semester. I later learned that I was her "rush crush"--Without having someone who is your champion in the house, it was hard to make it to bid night.

So, my advice is to get recs if you can and meet as many girls during Fall semester as possible--especially if your sorority recruitment is competitive like ours was.

Great post Zillini - that is a very good explanation of the situation.

Arkansas has Greek Week, which I assume to be something similar to that. GS could probably shed a little bit more light on it.

Actually, Arkansas has done away with Greek Week for the time being - no idea why. I think it is a really great tool to introduce the pnm's to the crazy world of recruitment.

Me too...when'd they get rid of it? I remember it being there bout 4 years ago.

The last time they held Greek Week was spring of '06.

recruitment feedback from out of state pnms
 

With recruitment starting for some schools in the next few weeks, I was wondering if some of you out-of-state pnms would give us some feedback after you go through recruitment about whether (and how much) being from out of state seemed to impact your results, if you can tell. Also what you did to help yourself stand out (in a good way) as the people on this thread have suggested. How many recs did you have for each house?Could you tell if the number of recs had an impact? [Treading a fine line here - don't want to overkill or look desperate]

Thought I would ask on this thread, although it may fall into the recruitment stories category. Thanks for any feedback.

This is a silly question, but if you called that Greek Week, what did you call the competition they had between all the GLOs? I am assuming you had something like that (with Greek Olympics, Greek sing etc).

We don't really have one?

I'm pretty sure we have just Homecoming where people compete. I guess Row Week has a few competitions in it too.

We've got so many ridiculous other competitions for sororities and fraternities...frats at bat - AOPi, Crowning - ZTA, Derby Days - EX, Watermelon Bust - LXA, some flag football tourney - EN, etc. It's too much work to have other weeks.

If you do system-wide competitions at Homecoming + the multudinous other things, yeah that makes sense.

Oops! I need to clarify my post - I was actually talking about Greek Weekend, which was a stand alone weekend where hs seniors came up for a day of mock rush and other activities.

Sorry for the confusion!

interested in knowing how this works out during recruitment
 

I am bumping the thread because I would really be interested in how successful out-of state pnms are in recruitment this fall, along with anything they thought contributed to their success (if they can tell). How they managed to stand out from the crowd for instance....

lawgal I was so curious about this last year I asked Irish Pipes if she could do her computer magic and break them (Auburn's) down by state and by group. She did and most OOS'ers were from nearby states. Maybe she'll do it again this year after AU posts it's lists with the hometowns listed.

A list of new members at Oklahoma State U was published a few days ago in an Oklahoma newspaper. Just from the most casual of glances, one can see out-of-staters from Texas, Kansas and Missouri, along with a few from more "exotic" locations.

Oklahoma State U. NPC Sorority Bid List 2008

http://www.stillwater-newspress.com/...225113435.html

Edited to add: I hope the link just above ^ works better than the one posted earlier below.
http://www.stillwater-newspress.com/...ces_printstory




Haven't got a clue as to what potential new members from out-of-state did / didn't do, or what percentage of them received / accepted bids, though:

drat
 

The link doesnt work for me.

It didn't work for me either. But if you go to the homepage and use the search function (type something like "OSU sorority") you should be able to get the list as one of the results and view it that way.

I saw a lot of Texas and Kansas, plus one Florida and one Illinois, but most were from OK.

Last year, something like 45% at Alabama were from out of state. I don't have the exact stats any more. The large state schools get a lot of out of state students so I don't think that simple fact of being out of state is a negative. The sponsor form is the key in these situations. I fell into both categories as I lived in state but had attended boarding school out of state for high school. That one fact may have helped me as everyone wanted to know what it was lke to go to boarding school! At least they remembered me.

Maybe this will work?

http://www.stillwater-newspress.com/...225113435.html

Anyway, it's from the August 12, 2008 Stillwater (OK) News-Press, so that paper's site can probably be searched if need be.

The link works, but it's kinda hard to read.

Looks like they just copied and pasted from the .xls

Oklahoma State results by state:

Oklahoma - 378
Texas - 101
Kansas - 20
Arkansas - 6
California - 3
New York - 3
Missouri - 2
Illinois - 2
Colorado - 1
Florida - 1
Georgia - 1
Tennessee - 1
North Carolina - 1
New Mexico - 1
Nevada - 1
Arizona - 1

I doubt there'd be any stats on this, but I'd love to see how many total PNM's went through broken down by state as well.

For Universities surrounding Dallas (Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Arkansas, notably) Texas isn't all that much of an "out of state" thing. Most of the girls coming up here have 6 or 7 friends in sororities as it is.

Very true. The chapter I advise at Arkansas has many, many Texas girls. Arkansas has some program that students from adjoining states get in-state tuition if they score a 25 (I think that's right) or more on their ACT.

I know in Tulsa we have a large number of kids going to Arkansas every year to take advantage of that program. The ones I know this year, without exception, have said they qualified for more scholarship money at Arkansas than they could get at OSU or OU.

Really? That's a huge incentive to adjoining state out of state students.

Especially ones affected by the top 10% rule at UT, who went to prestigious/rich high schools and are say in the top 15% of their class, and consequently can't get into UT.

Out Of State PNM's
 

My daughter recently completed recruitement at Southern Miss. We are from Virginia. Most of the other out of state girls were from Alabama and Louisiana. When she entered recruitment she didn't know anyone attending USM and had only encoutered a few of the sorority members at tables during orientation. We worked to get her two recs from each sorority on campus. I am also a very active alum of Chi O so it was easier for me to obtain recs for my daughter as many of my friends are in the sororitites on campus. She was immediately cut after the first day by DG, Pi Beta Phi and Phi Mu. The next round of parties she attended KD, DDD, Chi O and ADPI, four houses for philanthropy day and attended the same round of four parties for skit day. She then was cut down to only one pref party. I just returned from moving the rest of her dorm essentials and she did tell me that most of the girls going through recruitment knew some of the sisters already in the house. She made it to one of the final four that is considered for taking most of the local girls. I was very proud of her accomplishments and although she has tried to remain positive with her ultimate choice, I think she is still dissapointed in the final outcome. She is giving it a try and for this I admire her. She also stated that some of the girls had attended some pre partiesin the spring. I think it was essential for her to have those recs otherwise she would have gotten cut harder from the beginning because they didn't know her. She was also very prepared with questions and apprpriate dress. Although I have heard Southern Miss isn't considered competitive. I felt in the end it was. I have a friend whose duaghter is atteding Alabama from Virginia she is a four time legacy to one chapter and her mom is on the executive board. I will keep you updated on this girls progress at Alabama.