Confused- Junior rushing
 

okay, so i know a lot of you are saying, 'omg, another junior rushing thread- just do it!' but im in a little different situation. so basically i go to a small school with 7 sororities. in freshman year i rushed, got a bid to my second choice (which i found out wasnt really what i was suppose to get) and just didnt feel right, so after 6 weeks before initiation, i dropped. im happy with that decision, but since then i've always thought of rushing again. sophomore year, i went to study abroad, so i couldnt then. but now, im back about to enter my junior year, and so confused. i would accept bids to 3 out of the 7 sororities (just bc i have a better feel of them) but since we have small pledge classes, juniors arent usually what they are looking for. i dont know if i should go through it again, and potentially really embarass myself or just do it. also, should i ask actives what they think?

oh, and btw, small school means everyone knows everyone (at least who they are) and your 'story' so pretty much every sorority is going to know about freshman year.

Personally, I don't think you'd get a bid. I also attend a small school and if I had done the exact same thing, I know I wouldn't get a bid from any fraternity unless they were extremely desperate for members.

But hey, it never hurts to try though, right?

Just out of curiousity, how did you "find out?"

This is what will hurt you. And would hurt most freshmen too. Based on what you've provided, I'd say skip sorority recruitment and find other avenues to express yourself. Disclaimer: If you are BFF with LOTS of girls in these three sororities, and they are BEGGING you to participate, go for it. If you don't know any or only very few, it ain't gonna happen. If they didn't want you as a freshman, they won't want you as a junior.

And.... Ditto to lyrelyre's question.

i appreciate everyone's honesty, thanks. i 'found out' literally the day after bid day, when i was talking to a new member in my first choice and she told me some stuff about bid night and what some of the actives were saying (about me, and how i was suppose to be there). i shrugged that off, but then at retreat, the girls (which they weren't suppose to do) told us how the rush process works and how you can manipulate it to get the girls you want. THEN a girl (who didnt know i wanted to drop) TOLD me that they did some things (which i dont want to include) to get me number one on their list. thats also partially why i dropped- i appreciated that they wanted me, but they should have showed me more then did shady things, that eventually made me uphappy, and left them with one-less new member.

oh, and i know i sound arrogant when i say 'only 3 of the 7' but, honestly those are my friends and who i feel most comfortable around. im not ruling out anyone.

This actually isn't too different from any of the other junior rushing threads.

A few points I'd like to make:
* Confused here.... Your freshman year, you dropped 6 weeks before initiation? Most new member programs are 6-8 wks. Assuming yours was 8 wks, I wouldn't say you really gave them a fair shake. Tons of girls go through rush every year and end up with their second or third choice but end up loving their house, but you have to give the experience a REAL shot before making a final decision. I'd say that you didn't.

* How do you "know" you didn't get the house you were supposed to get? The only people who "Know" what house you were supposed to get were the people doing bid-matching. And that's if your school still does it that way. You might have heard things from girls but I'd venture to guess almost all of that is hearsay or rumors.

* I don't think you should rush. Already, you are limiting yourself to less than half of the groups on campus. You're setting yourself up for disappointment especially since you're going in as a junior and you seem to know they don't typically take juniors.

This is going to sound harsh, but I feel you were given the opportunity for Greek life and you snubbed up your nose at it. Unless those girls were witches or they hazed you, there's no reason to drop only after a couple of weeks. You're not going to automatically become best friends with everyone ... it takes time to get fully acclimated to a chapter.

If you're going to be one of those people who wonders for the rest of her life what would have happened if you rushed again, then just do it. It doesn't sound like it would be a successful experience, but you'll never know until you try.

I don't think new members are the authority to be asking, because most nms are new to the process themselves.

There are a ton of people on here who are super knowledgeable about bid matching, but here's a general idea of how it goes:

If you attend a pref party, you ARE on their bid list. Everyone is. It's a matter of WHERE you are on their list.

If Second Choice Sorority put you as their #1 and First Choice Sorority put you farther down on their list, if First Choice already matches quota before they get to your name on the list, you go with Second Choice since you were so high up on their list and you listed them on your bid card.

Second Choice didn't do anything sneaky to get you. They can't move people's names around. You were at the top of their list because they wanted you.


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I don't want to put words in the mouth of the OP, and I'm not sure if it even matters anymore, but I think the OP had a missing comma in that statement. I think she meant, "after six weeks, before initiation, I dropped." Meaning, after six weeks of pledging, but still before initiation, she dropped.

I THINK that's what she meant, I was confused too.

You really can't know for sure if you were "supposed" to be be at your first choice. First, most actives don't truly understand how bid matching works. You only get your second choice if your first choice fills quota before they get to your name on the list AND if you are high enough on your second choice.

Second, depending on the methods that a chapter uses for membership selection, the actives may not even know the exact position of each PNM on the bid list though they still participate in membership selection. So in many cases, an active that WAS at membership selection may not even know if you were "supposed" to be there.

My guess is that there were actives in the chapter who did genuinely like you so they thought you should be higher on the list, but membership selection isn't the decision of one person. The chapter decides. And it's not necessarily that certain people didn't like you, just that they liked other people more. It doesn't really matter anyway and you'll never know for sure.

But, like others have said, you're doing yourself a disservice by limiting yourself to only 3 of 7 chapters. Granted, I don't know the dynamics of your campus, I don't know you, and I don't know which chapters you think are the best fit for you. Most GCers are quick to assume that when a PNM says she only wants X of Y chapters, she is only considering ones that are "popular" and mentally eliminating "low tier" chapters. I can say that out of 14 chapters at my alma mater, I think only 4 other chapters than the one I joined would have been a good fit for me, but those chapters felt the same way about me too.

So, based on the information you've given us, your chances don't look so good, but it's up to you to decide which is worse: rejection or never knowing what could have been.

As others have stated, your second-choice house did not do anything to prevent your first-choice house from bidding you, had the sisters so desired.

In order to be successful this go-round, you're going to have to have girls in your desired houses pulling for you. Here's my question: How will you feel if you don't get a bid from a house where you have several friends? -- because this is an all-too-real possibility.

Personally, I don't think that you are going to like your results any better this time. But if you can handle that...*shrug*

Just to beat a dead horse, being #1 on a chapter's bid list does not affect the bid matching process as to other chapters. You did not get a bid to your first choice for the sole, simple reason that you were not high enough on their bid list. While I know this is harsh, I hate when PNMs hold onto false hope that they "should have been" placed elsewhere. Additionally, it makes you sound like a fool to anyone who is familiar with bid matching.

Simply put, if you can handle rejection go through recruitment again. If getting a bid to your “bottom 4” or no bid at all is going to make you bitter or depressed, don’t go through recruitment again.

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I love you guys!