I have to ask
 

I read this - again: "Being a legacy can matter, but the reality is there are more legacies going through xxxx recruitment than there are spaces for all the PNMs. "

Now, I didn't go through a typical rush, especially not at a southern, competitive school, and we didn't even have "quota" or "total" in our vocabularies, so I have a question. I don't want to I can't wrap my brain around the math.

If quota is (number of women who attend preference)/(number of chapters), and assuming there are few women who send more than one legacy in a given year, it is mathematically impossible for there to be more legacies than spaces, isn't it?

I suppose it's possible there are more XYZ legacies than spots in XYZ. And I understand the point is to try to make rushees understand that there's no guarantee they'll get Momma's chapter, but am I missing something mathematically?

Happens all the time. Maybe a school has 1000 PNMs and ABC has 50 legacies and quota is going to be around 30. Phi Mu chapters have this happen in Georgia, for instance, because there are so many Phi Mu chapters in the state.

ETA: if a sorority's rules are that all legacies asked back to prefs get put on the first bid list, they need to make SURE that the number of legacies doesn't exceed the number on the first bid list.

If your question is are we referring to a specific chapter rather than all of recruitment, then yes. Delta Gamma often has this issue in Mississippi (we were founded there)- though new member classes have gotten so big that it's not always the case as it's been before. I'm not surprised at Phi Mu in Georgia - esp on some of the campuses where quota is in the 20's or so.

Lately I've thought of how the big pledge classes could create issues in this area. Take Arkansas. When I was there, the pledge classes were under 30 and for a number of years after that, many groups still had more legacies than spots in their pledge classes. Now with classes of over 100, an alum may see that half of the girls in her sorority's new pledge class were legacies and quickly realize that the other half were not;the sorority liked at least, say, 60 girls more than they liked her daughter who just rushed and was cut by her group.

That's got to be awkward in so many ways.

I would say it happens most often at schools with old, historic chapters or as Carnation mentioned, in states where a sorority has a large number of chapters. If I am understanding your question correctly DGTess (and I am in no way,shape, or form a math person, so take what I write here with a giant grain of salt) you are not understanding how with quotas as high as they are at some schools, how there could be x number of legacies equal to quota. We are talking about the number of legacies to ABC at the beginning of recruitment, not the number that will end up being invited to ABC prefs.

As Carnation said, some of those legacies are not going to be invited back to their legacy house for prefs, or the legacies are not enamored of their legacy chapter and they choose not to return there. Since many sororities require legacies attending prefs. to appear on the first bid list, or at the top of the second bid list, some legacies will not get invited back. If there were "free legacy" choices, it might be a different story, but legacies do not garner a special category (like upper class quotas at some schools) so those little pnm fishies are all swimming in the same pool.

There really can be 60 legacies to ABC that start out at Big State University, and if they were all kept through prefs. and had to be placed on the first bid list per ABC's national policy and quota was 55, there would be 5 legacies without a bid, and not doubt, the chapter would have hell to pay.

It should also be noted that different NPC groups have different definitions of legacy. We have discussed this before - but some groups only count a mother or a grandmother or a sister as a legacy and some groups also count steps or cousins. If you count first cousins a popular chapter can rack up legacies really quickly

Sometimes I think we're all going to end up with the rule that only having an in-house sister will make you a legacy. (Of course, many of us have known of PNMs with in-house sisters who didn't get a bid.)

Is it open information about what sororities consider a Legacy?

There is a thread on GC that discusses that very topic.

I guess I'm getting hung up on terminology.

There are not more legacies than slots. Can't happen. If 800 women go through pref for 10 chapters, quota will be 80, right? So maybe there are more than 80 legacies to XYZ, but there are NOT more than 800 legacies. Therefore, there are not more legacies than there are spaces. (I can't imagine even 80 legacies, but then I am not at all familiar with big southern schools, where I wouldn't fit at all. That's why I'm trying to learn.)

So if I'm understanding correctly, it would be correct to say "there are more XYZ legacies going through rush than XYZ can take" but not to say "there are more legacies than spaces." Is that it? Am I simply not understanding the verbal shorthand?

You have it now. Sometimes at the beginning of recruitment, you already know that you have more legacies than you could possibly take. Take your example. There are 800 PNMs and maybe 150 are legacies to your sorority. If your sorority is in huge demand, good luck to you in deciding who to release. :(

I think one of the places where several chapters may have more legacies than quota slots is Ole Miss. It's happened to us there before the quota up close to 100. And MS State is another where we almost always have more legacies than quota since it's in the 50's.

No doubt that requires no small amount of tact from the chapter! I can't even imagine how stressful that would be for the bid committee; the potential for lots of p***ed off alumnae.

You can't count a legacy on a one-to-one basis. A PNM can be a legacy for more than one GLO. If a PNM has a mom who belonged to group ABC, and a sister who is a member of group CDE, and a grandma who was a member of Group FGH and another grandma who was a member of Group IJK, she (probably) is a legacy to all of those groups.

I sincerely hope not. That would take legacy status away from any woman who wasn't lucky enough to be born with a sister. I would not want my daughter to lose her legacy status just because her only connection is her mother. (Although the probability of her becoming a DDD around here is slim to none so it's not like I worry about it at night.)

I do think many groups will eventually end up with legacy being only mother and sister. IIRC I think someone posted a thread that shared all that information about different groups. I think DDD has gone to that which is a change from when I was in college.