Is this ok?
 

Hi, all....I'm an alum from XYZ sorority, and my alma mater had their sorority recruitment a couple of weeks ago. I had a question for you guys about the way things happened.
Quota ended up being N, and some chapters ended up getting about 5-10 more than N. Is that ok? Does PC say that chapters can get more than quota?

quota additions are for girls who maximized all their options and ended up bidless. npc suggests that quota additions be no more than 5% of quota. it is legit, if not a little confusing.

Yes, that is entirely possible, and becoming more common. Many schools are adopting a "guaranteed matching" policy. It guarantees that a PNM who has made it with at least one chapter for preference round who has maximized her options throughout recruitment and ranks all of her preference party chapters will get a bid to one of those chapters. It's to discourage suiciding and to reward the women who "play fair" during recruitment. The release figure method forces chapters to trim their bid lists to maximize the number of chapters making quota and PNMs getting placed.

Note this is not a "guarantee a bid to any PNM who signs up for recruitment to the point where chapters have to argue who gets stuck with certain PNMs" policy. Only Tufts does that.

5% Quota additions are no longer the rule for NPC groups. I have seen QAs this year 10 or 15 over quota, particularly where the campus is using the Release Figures Method.

Don't forget that some chapters will also count the number of women they could snap bid or COR immediately after Formal Rush in their announcement. I've seen this happen mostly when that extra 2-3 women will bring the chapter to Total.

I think my alma mater uses release figures, but I thought it was supposed to help even-out the size of chapters and help smaller chapters.

we had a chapter take 11 over quota of 26. So I dont think that 5% could be the way they do it

Not especially, that is what the Release Figures Method is supposed to do. Quota additions are girls who mismatched during bid matching and you will typically see the most quota addtions at the strongest chapters - typically - your results could vary.

It does help even out the size as the larger, more successful groups are required to release more women earlier on in the process. I know of at least two groups at Albama that had to go from 800 to 300 in one day. That's a huge number to release but it let's the women know wher they stand much earlier. Used to soome groups would carry a lot of women up to pref just to inflate their numbers and it was not fair to the women that they didn;t invite back at the end. And with RFM, they do a quota range which allows the computer to run several scenarios and chose the one that places the most women. If you add to that the premise that all who maximize their opportunities will get a bid or that the university will place all who do so no matter what, then you get these larger numbers beyond quota...which is what happened in loveinxi's comment as I know that campus and belong to the group that took the 11 over quota. The old Quota Addition formula is no longer in use when a campus does RFM - which they all are supposed to be doing now.

It seems this new way of matching as many PNMs as possible has been hurting the smaller chapters more.
The smallest chapter on campus took about 5 under quota, and the largest took about 10 over quota. All this seems to do is put a wider gap between the two and make it more difficult, if it's possible at all, for the smaller chapter to catch up.
(And I also wanted to point out that these aren't large chapters, so 5-10 really makes a difference)

Perhaps it depends on the school. Although we don't have all the results from U of F for instance, of the two groups reporting the most over quota (whether through QA or snap bids we don't know) one was the smallest chapter and the other was below total as well last year (based on the numbers in the scholarship reports). U of F is fortunate to have 16 really great sororities and from an outsider's view it looks like RFM is helping to keep all of them strong.

Coming from a university with campus total of 75, I wouldn't necessarirly say that this hurts the small chapters more since the smaller chapters who fall under campus total can COB all year long while the larger chapters (at or above campus total) do not have this option and can only recruit during one week of the year.

Yep exactly. The smaller chapters can still be picking up women now to get up to total. If for some reason your panhel or school is preventing this, notify your regional panhel rep immediately.

release figures method
 

The new release figure method really does help smaller chapters because it requires chapters with higher return rates to release more women, especially earlier in recruitment. Thus, larger groups can not "string along" women that they have little intention on pledging.

The result is that more PNMs are staying in the system, perhaps giving some sororities a better look and finding happy homes...when they previously may have dropped out of recruitment when all of the "bigger houses" released them before pref.

It does make the quota and quota additions numbers look strange in some cases, but more chapters are making quota and we are pledging more women nationwide to our Greek Systems.

If the chapters are under 100 people, taking 10 QAs is WAY too much.

It almost sounds like even if girls were released from a sorority, they put it down on their bid card anyway. Are the sororities happy w/ the girls they got or are they looking at some of them going "WTF?"

Correct me if I am wrong but can't a PNM only become a quota addition to a chapter if the PNM appears somewhere on that chapter's bid list? Hence, a chapter shouldn't be too suprised if a PNM at Pref ends up with a (QA) bid.

No, you are probably right. This quota additions thing confuses me.

Honestly this just sounds like release figures didn't work the way they were supposed to - like the %ages the chapters were supposed to release were wrong or something.

No one in the chapter (other than Rec Chair, advisor) actually know who is a QA because QA's are usually the girls at the bottom of the bid list (keeping in mind that this list contains everyone who attended the pref parties and is priority ranked) who do not find themselves with a match based on 1) their pref rankings and 2) the sororities bid lists. So, no one is surprised by a pnm who receives a bid via QA because they don't know who they are.

If there are huge numbers of QA's for a handful of chapters then Panhellenic needs to re-think Quota. It's better to have a higher quota with a few chapters not making it because those chapters can COB up to quota to be competitive in size. Low quota leaves the chapters that didn't get QA's but made quota no option to add members (unless they are still below Chapter Total).

You mean - when they set quota? i.e., they should set it before pref instead of after pref maybe?

GOSH this is all really fascinating.

ETA: I really mean it seriously.

I would never recommend setting quota before pref. You automatically set someone up to not make quota. The new RFM makes sure that all women are placed and that's the important factor.

The smallest chapter on campus went into recruitment with around 30, and gained about 20

The largest chapter on campus went into recruitment with about 45, and gained about 30

(quota was about 25)

It just doesn't seem right to me....just puts a bigger number gap between them

^^^ Just means that smaller chapter has the opportunity to get 25-30 new members through COB this year ... better get started!

What is campus total?

Not necessarily. If total is around 50, the smaller chapter is stuck where it is. This happened on my campus for years, with the bigger groups taking quota+ and the smaller groups left to COB to total, which was always lower than what the bigger chapters had because they did so well at recruitment each year.

When I was in college, in the cases where women did not match to their #1 or #2, she was given to the chapter (#1 or #2) that was smaller, and I believe that's now NPC wanted it done back then. Is this not the way it's done anymore?

I do believe there should be a cap on quota additions in order to keep chapter sizes relatively equal.

^^^ Just my guestimate based on the numbers the OP did provide. Campus total may be different.

Theorectically, it should all eventually even out. Some schools are just now using RFM and it may take a year or two for things to shake out. Basically, it makes the options more realistic for the PNMs by forcing releases earlier. However, the basic premise is to place everyone who signs a bid card. If one group ends up with a seemingly disproportionate number of NMs, then the other groups were not recruiting the women they needed to be and that group had a more focused idea of who they wanted and who wanted them. The new RFM definitely places the onus on the larger chapters to refine their recruitment techniques rather than depend on the fact that they've always gotten quota. 33girl, I don't know what happened on your campus but am sure there were some circumstances at play. With RFM, each PH is to check with their assigned PH alum RFM specialist when they do bid matching so I am sure the outcome was approved.

What what? Not my campus, LOL.

Ooops....meant Sororitycutie

52

Thanks :)

Whoever did the QAs was not up to snuff - 10 quota additions with a total that small is completely out of line. To put it in perspective - they were allowed to QA 20% of sorority total. This would be like a sorority at Bama or another big school having 40 quota additions.

The smallest chapter needs to get on the horn w/ their national Panhel rep and/or recruitment poobah ASAP. They got screwed.

I have to respectfully disagree. We do not know this chapter nor it's history. It is entirely possible that they simply could not generate the return numbers to ensure quota. That is, say the PNMs could attend 2 prefs. They would need to have 2-1/2 quota attend their party to be sure they got quota. Anything less than that and it lessens exponentially. And PH should not keep women from pledging if they have a bid simply because one group cannot acheive quota unless it so low as to have it said that it was set so that group could "pledge quota." The other groups would still have taken way more women as there is no cap on QAs under RFM.

I wasn't talking about when quota was set, rather what quota was set at. Further explanation below.
For the sake of this discussion let's put Chapter Total aside and COR'ing up to Total. I'm only talking about Quota. Let's say at State U there are 6 chapters. If quota is set at 25 all chapters achieve quota. However, all except 1 get 10 quota additions. Wouldn't it be more fair to set quota at 35 and let the 1 chapter try to snap bid up to quota? This way ABC at least has a chance to grow it's size to be comparable with the others. If they make quota they can't issue anymore bids.

In this case scenario, yes, ABC has a little more chance to grow it's size, although there are no guarantees that they any of the women who dropped them earlier in recruitment will accept a snap bid anyway. You end up with more women who go without bids. The chapter has the advantage. You also have a lot of women who leave the process feeling very angry and upset with the Greek system as a whole.

The other way, more women get bids, so they aren't going around bad mouthing the Greek system on campus, but the one chapter doesn't get bigger. It's been a long time since I was directly involved with snap bidding, but I don't recall very many women taking up that option because there was a reason that the chapter doing the snapping was dropped from her schedule earlier on. I'd be REALLY curious to see numbers on how many snap bids are actually accepted and how many of those women get initiated. That would help shape my own opinion of which way is better.

Either way, it's very tough to be the chapter that is significantly smaller than the others and all of our groups have at least one of those somewhere in the country so I do think the policy makers are cognizant of that.

Zillini: Even if you did that, the one chapter is still below total and nothing is going to change that. Lowering quota so they can say they "got quota" isn't fair to them either in the long run as it's arbitrary. And it is definitely not fair to the women who are left out of process as a result. And as AGDee said, there may not be a pool of women for the smaller chapter to snap bid. Everyone left may be women they released and I can't see that they would lower their standards to take them at this point - nor that a woman would accept a bid from them if she had been previously released by them. COR is their only real option.

I still believe that the top priority for formal recruitment is to place as many qualified women as possible. Whatever scenario does that, even if it leaves my chapter on the lower end (which it has), then that's the one I want.

With this scenario, the end results are the same as if the quota was set at 25 and all but one got 10 quota additions. If the new quota is 35, then that group still only pledges 25 because if 10 more girls had wanted to join it, they would have been their quota additions. Raising quota only works if there are sufficient numbers to fill it. QA's are added to a group's bid list when they are (usually) the pnm's first choice, but failed to match up in regular bid matching.

My question about all this is if the release figures were utilized properly to begin with - i.e. if the larger chapters released the proper amount of girls. It just kind of sounds like they didn't.

I understand that placing as many rushees as possible is part of the RFM, but in this case it kind of flies in the face of NPC's attempt to put all sororities on a level playing field.

I definitely agree.

At my school, it was actually the "popular" chapters that would make exactly quota (or have fewer QAs) and the "middle" or "lower" chapters that would get the most QAs. This is because the "popular" chapters have to trim their bid lists to the point where it minimizes having a ridiculous number of QAs.

Now, I'll also mention that there's not a huge disparity among chapter size at my school (thanks to proper implementation of the RFM). Suiciding is a HUGE problem, so we don't end up with ridiculous amounts of QAs, which is why we can guarantee a match to a PNM who maximizes her options.

The chapters that don't make quota usually come close and/or COB to reach it. I do have a feeling that 1 or 2 of the 3 chapters that didn't make quota in 2007 when I was a Rho Gamma missed it because they over-released (since chapters are allowed to release more than the suggested number). I say it's only a feeling because I don't have proof; I just know that the chapters in question are considered desirable and I can't think of any other reason why they wouldn't make quota.

The only 3 PNMs who weren't placed with a chapter suicided the largest sorority on campus

And, I contacted someone at our national headquarters who is in charge of chapter numbers, so we'll see....