Greek Preview Day at Alabama
 

I am not familiar with this weekend at Alabama, and am helping a local girl(very small town out of state) prepare for recruitment at Bama.

Mainly, I am wondering how vital it is for a pnm to attend this weekend...

Also, the Greek Life website mentions that this year there will be teas and other events on Friday and Sunday in addition to the Saturday sorority tours. Are those events by invitation only?

Any help is much appreciated!

My instinct is she should attend...I agree with you. Any chance to get your name and face out there is good.

But the concept of the teas is a new one to me. I would think that with the usual Spring no contact rules as well as the concept that the weekend is usually geared toward a "go Greek" theme instead of "go XYZ" would make an invitation tea a violation of some sort.

I am anxious to hear from some more info to clarify everything. I will contact the Greek Life office, but I know that there are women on here who can give me a good picture of what to expect.

http://www.greeklife.ua.edu/panpreview.html

This is the schedule and tells a little about the activities. Hope it helps!

From that site: "In addition to the preview day activities, many sororities will hosts teas and other recruitment events on Friday evening and Sunday morning for perspective members."

What's a perspective member?

It's a prospective member, as referenced by someone who has atrocious grammar. I railed about it on here at some point.

Preview Day is great to attend. Not only do you get to meet some of the sorority women and tour the houses, but you also get to see a 'What to Wear' fashion show. They usually have to dos and don'ts about what you should wear the week off rush. They have a question and answer session and day's attendance is very high. No Contact usually begins the first week of May so they do have invitation only events that go on that weekend. As an out of state pnm, she may not get those invitations but should attend the weekend anyway. A few houses have held open events before and tell the pnms about those when they tour the houses.

How important are these invitation only events for a successful recruitment? Do girls who cannot attend feel like they still have a "good" rush in the fall? By good, I mean several choices...

I know lots of out-of-state girls who didn't get invited to these events and had a good rush experience anyway. If you get an invite, great. If not, get recs so they at least know you are coming, have a good resume, and be yourself during rush!

I attended Panhellenic weekend last year and it helped teach me what to expect when rush week came around. In terms of where to stay, I stayed with a Theta Friday and Saturday night and not only did I gain a friend, but she answered alot of questions I still had about recs, rush, etc. If I would have been from out of state, I would have brought my mom and stayed in a hotel being so far away from home. Last year on this weekend, I also attended an AXO dinner at a local restaurant, a PiPhi fashion show, and a Theta Tea. The dinner and the tea were invite only and you could bring guests while the fashion show was open to everyone. I would highly encourage any girl going to Panhellenic weekend to go to as many events as possible but find the activities she would enoy because you can't go to all of them because most of them are at the same time on Sunday.

My sister was really worried about this when she rushed... as an out of stater she didn't know much of anyone and so she was only invited to these events at a couple of houses.

The house she joined did not invite her to any events, even though they held them. To me, this is proof that you can join a chapter without being invited to their pre-recruitment events.