Simple Question about recruitment from a new member?
 

Hi! I'm a senior in high school, and will be attending college next year in a pretty good northeastern university. They only have a handful of sororities, but interest in greek life has been growing exponentially, with double the girls going through recruitment this year than the year before (its deferred until january).

I've heard rumors that since the recent pledge classes have been so big, half the girls got cut this year, and didnt get a bid anywhere. I thought, however, that the quota is based on the number of girls who sign up?

Can someone clarify this for me? Is it possible that half the girls do get cut from every sorority right off the bat?

You are correct. The more women who sign up, the more who get bids. There are a few schools where this is not the case, but none of them are in the Northeast.

You are doing better than your friends, apparently, at understanding that a lot of the rumors are crap. Except for the University of Indiana, pretty much every major school in the country uses a system called RFM that typically means girls experience bigger cuts than they used to, but getting cut doesn't mean getting cut OUT. It just means you need to give all or at least more of the chapters a chance. Go ahead and have your favorites, but DO NOT let yourself say "I'll take anyone but THAT house." You're allowed to not like someone at the end, but rush is a lot to digest. Give everyone an equal shot at the beginning. Your opinion can change wildly over the span of the week.

Often quota is not set until preferential round, sometimes before the pref. parties begin, sometime after Panhellenic has a firm count of how many girls showed up for pref. and sometimes quota is set based on the number of girls who sign bid cards after the pref. parties. If there are 6 sororities and 120 girls attend pref.(and quota is set on the # of girls who show up for pref.), quota would be 20 and conceivably, everyone could receive a bid.

It might be possible that half the girls got cut from A sorority, if that sorority has exemplary return rates (i.e. 100% of the girls they ask back want to return and this has happened for the last 10 years). However, that is very very very rare. And that would NEVER happen for ALL the sororities.

This is just another "look how exclusive we are" rumor silliness that sometimes comes out of (usually brand new) members' mouths. If half the girls are gone after the first round, it's because they're closed-minded and silly and drop out - NOT because all the sororities have cut them.

OP-or perhaps say, 1000 girls signed up for rush, and 534 got bids. Someone could extrapolate that to mean that "OMG, only 53% of the girls got bids, we are doomed, doomed...we'll have a hellacious time getting a bid!" In reality, the vast majority of those 466 girls dropped out along the way/never showed up because they decided greek life wasn't for them, for whatever reason.

Thanks. I honestly would be happy in any sorority-since there's so few, I won't have much of a choice! I've heard good things about each of them.

But I'm just worried, because with the amount of girls rushing and the amount of sororities, each pledge class will have over 80 girls! That sounds crazy!

There are schools where new member classes have over 100 members. They learn to deal with it. This may be one reason why some PNMs drop out as well. Not everyone likes the idea of hanging out with 80 of her BFFs. Big chapters have programs to make it work, but in a group that big, you won't be close to every single person in your chapter like you would be in a chapter with 20 members total. But a chapter with 20 members will be limited in the things they can afford to do compared to the larger chapters. There are always trade-offs. Sisterhood should not be one of them.

According to this article, the number of bids given this past formal rush was higher than last year's. No mention was made of a membership cap, and despite what some members think, the reason most unbidded women didn't get bids is because they voluntarily withdrew.

Yeah, sounds like they use a standard recruitment method.

Thanks for that example. My college is very similar academically/ranking-wise to Harvard, and the number of sororities/ girls rushing is almost exactly the same.