If you get to Pref Night, does this guarantee a bid?
 

If you get to pref night and you're invited back to 2 -3 houses, and you rank your houses in order of preference, and you like all three equally, but your ranks don't necessarily match up with the houses ranks, do you still get a bid from at least 1 of the houses? (in general) barring any major faux pas?

Actually, that would be considered Membership Selection information, which is very much a members only discussion.

But being invited back to three Pref parties is a very good sign, in general.

It depends upon quite a few things- 1 do they have guaranteed bidding? meaning if a PNM goes through and attends all houses and all parties they are guaranteed a bid from one of their houses.

If there is not guaranteed bidding there is a chance, but not likely, that a PNM would not get a bid. If a panhellenic is also doing quota additions (Quota plus girls who may not have matched) it is likely a PNM will get a bid from one of the three houses. But as I said, there are always weird things that happen. The goal is that as many PNMs that go through the process are matched.

Hopefully that is helpful. When is bid day?

There are no guarantees, but the fact your daughter made it this far and is happy with all her options puts her in the best possible position at this stage of the game- well ahead of most PNMs. From this point, odds are she will get a great outcome- but given the stakes it will be hard for anyone here to make guarantees that do not exist.

I know that is not the 100% you hope for, but rest assured it is as good as it gets and I am sure I am not alone in wishing her the best and hoping you will have great news to report very soon.

Fingers crossed and good luck!

This will all depend if a campus Panhellenic has a guaranteed matching policy. Some campus Panhellenics will guarantee a bid to any PNM who attends at least one preference party, has maximized her options throughout recruitment and ranks all chapters where she attended preference. This is to discourage suiciding, or not ranking all of your options. Even if she is at the bottom of both/all of her preference chapters, if the campus has this policy she should get a bid. Every PNM who attends preference is on the chapter's bid list somewhere.

However, if a campus does not guarantee a match to PNMs who maximize their options, of course, there are no guarantees.

And there are never any guarantees when a PNM suicides or ranks 2 of 3 chapters regardless of the matching policy.

being invited to prefs does not guarantee a bid.

if it did, Rho Chis would not have to make "those calls" right before bid day.

what exactly does it mean if a PNM suicides? I dont think I have heard anyone in my chapter ever use that term but I see it on here a lot

The University of Kansas guarantees a bid to anyone who attends pref ceremonies and maximizes her options.

Maybe I'm just accustomed to my own system, but it seems unnecessarily harsh to have PNMs making it all the way to pref (and maximizing their options) and then receiving no bids.

"Those" calls are limited only to women who ranked only 1 or 2 chapters and didn't receive a bid from either house. I've never heard of this happening around here, but I'm sure there are a few cases every year and I just don't get wind of it. It's more common that a PNM is dropped from recruitment after second invites.

Many chapters (I'm sure not all) will place PNMs somewhere on their bid list after pref. Now where on the list and how bids are matched is another story. On my campus it is highly likely that a PNM who has maximized her options will get a bid somewhere but, as in life, there are no guarantees.

As has already been said, this is treading very close to membership selection information which is for members only.

I don't understand. Membership selection involves how a house chooses its new sisters.

Bid matching, Panhellenic rules, etc. should not, in my mind, be considered "membership selection".

What am I missing? Mind you, I did not go through a formal rush of the same type many of you have. At my school, and in my day (all well removed from here) Panhellenic was only minimally involved by setting rush week and then staying out of the process. So I may well not have all the information that would make this obvious to me.

^^You are right, understanding bid matching is really not treading on membership selection criteria.

However, pref round/bid matching practices can vary from campus to campus and depend on the system the panhellenic office uses to match girls to chapters.

If your campus uses the Release Figures Method, and a pnm maximizes her options on pref round. (in layman's terms - accepts an invitation to every house who invites her back on pref night) Then, she is guaranteed a bid at one of those houses.

On campuses where this is not the system, then there is a chance that a pnm could attend the maximum number of parties on pref night and still not receive a bid.

NPC rules say that all PNMs that attend a pref event for a chapter are on their bid list somewhere.

Quota additions are for those PNM's that don't match during formal bid matching but that maximized their options. This is no isp-ing but also no idp-ing (intentional double pref when they went to 3 but only put down 2). Everyone else is eligible and NPC did away with the 5% rule so all women can pretty much be matched. Guarantee placement, unless it is requiring the ISP and IDP group to be placed is pretty much obsolete.

Campuses I've worked with this year have had 100% placement of maximizing PNMs.

From what we've heard they are letting the PNMs drop one sorority before the sororities drop PNMs. Which means if the PNM drops AAA and then BBB, CCC, FFF all drop the PNM but AAA did not, the PNM is just out of luck...it sounds like there is something wrong there

Where are you talking about that they are doing this and is it all in the same round. It may be a misunderstanding of the way the process works. In priority they women cluster and rank and it may seem to them that they are releasing someone, but they aren't.

A warning of sorts
 

The niece of a good friend of mine had the misfortune to get the dreaded "call" the morning of bid day, even though three houses invited her to three preference night events.

In retrospect, the young woman realizes that she was seeking membership into three of the top tier sororities (hold your horses, GCers; every campus has a ranking as to who the top fraterities and sororities are) on campus. She also realizes she was pretty lucky to get as far as the preference round at a highly competitive Greek campus, considering that she wasn't a legacy nor part of the old-girl network.

When she got the call, she said her Rho Chi tried to be consoling as did some of the women in her group. She put on a brave front as she watched her friends go off to their sorority houses, even though she admitted that she was envious of those girls.

She said that most of the sororities that she had been interested in the early rounds made quota and those that didn't she didn't have any interest in. She said it would be pretty difficult for a second year student to go through rush again if she hadn't received a bid as a freshman.

The young woman said she thought about transferring, but she didn't want to give up her place in a competitive academic program.

My friend said that her niece enjoyed her college years for the most part. However, my friend said that her niece almost never discusses her experiences during sorority rush and tries to change the subject whenever someone talks about Greeks or Greek life in college.

I hope and pray that other young women don't have the misfortune that my friend's niece had during her Greek recruitment period.

^^This is why I really think that guaranteed matching is a good idea. If a PNM plays by the rules, maximizes her options, ranks all her preference chapters, she completely deserves to be placed in one of those chapters. In the above situation, I'd venture to say that the PNM in question did fit into top tier chapters, because not one, not two, but 3 of them invited her to pref! Top tier chapters do not have long bid lists per the RFM (probably 1.5x quota), so they definitely want every single PNM on their lists. The above situation is an example of a PNM getting screwed for no reason.

ETA: I understand quota is a method to keep sororities on equal footing. As long as a campus is using the RFM, chapters will make the necessary cuts, and if a chapter happens to do a little better one year and match a few more women via quota additions, let them. Having each chapter make EXACTLY quota (and no more) should not be important. Much better than having broken hearts for no reason.

I agree. If a PNM was liked well enough to be invited to Pref by the max number of houses, ranked them all (no suiciding), followed all the Recruitment rules, then she should be given a Bid from one of those chapters. This is a real life example of when Quota Additions should be used and why they are beneficial to the whole system.

My school doesn't have guaranteed matching or anything, but we spend a LONG time doing delibs for pref night. While every girl we ask back to pref night might not be at the very very top of our list, we would not invite a girl back to pref night unless we felt comfortable also offering her a bid.

Only is really unusual circumstances would we drop a girl we'd invited to pref night.


ETA: I am in a local house, so we can offer bids to as many girls as we'd like, though we usually end up with around the same number as all of the other local & national houses.