Formal Recruitment at UC Berkeley
 

Several young women I know will be going through recruitment at Cal next week and I haven't seen much on Greekchat about this school...How competitive is it and are recommendations necessary or just beneficial? I did write recommendations for them but I am just wondering for the future:)

From what I understand about Cal, it is somewhat competitive for a west coast school, but recs are still considered beneficial rather than absolutely necessary. It is tougher to get into some chapters than others. I visited that campus this spring. Beautiful!

I was an adviser at Cal for years and can confirm this is all accurate. If you have a chance, I would definitely write recommendations in the future to help the women stand out!

Houses are beautiful although smaller than SEC schools. Some chapters are much more difficult to get into than others. Maybe 30% of women sign up last minute and so do not have recommendations. A lot of emphasis is put on what did girls accomplish while in high school, because - let's face it, it's Berkeley - almost all will have great grades.

LOL: Dukedg and I posted at the same time.

Thank you all! I will come back and post after my rec girls go through and hopefully report back on their recruitment experiences.

Please do share... I love west coast stories!!!

Also, a good piece of advice to pass on to your PNMs is to be well-behaved on game day on the 31st. They are taking a break from recruitment after house tours (round 2) and before philanthropy (round 3) for the Northwestern game on thatSaturday night. That means lots of Cal tailgates AND fraternity parties too.

While everyone IS supposed to be dry and not out mingling, it's anticipated that this could still be very difficult to enforce. PNMs do not want to be out and about doing things that could derail their recruitments as *everyone* has that as a day off from recruitment!

833 PNMs are registered to start recruitment this year. I believe this is a new record for Berkeley!!! Unity Day is tomorrow.

Wow! It sounds like Greek Life is thriving at Cal! I heard that the spring admits are allowed to go through recruitment( I think this is a good thing)! Are they looked at by the chapters any differently?

I'm not sure what you mean by spring admits - women who aren't coming until spring? They would not be going through to my knowledge. The recruitment rules state "regularly enrolled full-time UC Berkeley or UC Berkeley Fall Program for Freshmen student in good standing with the University of California, Berkeley" may participate in fall recruitment.

I am also not sure what you mean by this, I was an advisor at Cal for a few years (recruitment in fact!) and have not heard of this! I do know they have a large amount of transfer students which results in having an UC quota.

Cal has some beautiful houses and wonderful girls! Good luck this week to both the PNM's and the chapters!

I may be imaging this, but wasn't it true that Cal would admit people who had to do full time extension in the fall and then could join "regular" UCB (for lack of a better term) in the spring? I definitely remember that happening when I was an adviser and those women were allowed to participate in recruitment.

I don't remember Panhel identifying the women separately pre- or post-ICS (we started using ICS partway through my advising years there).

Exactly dukedg! Students are housed together near the edge of campus and attend class in the fall at the Berkeley Extention a couple of blocks from campus.

Ah... yes, Berkeley Extension students are allowed to go through recruitment from what I'm reading in this year's rules.

When I was at Cal (7 years ago now...) spring admits in the Fall Extension program were eligible to go through formal recruitment. Spring admits who were not in the Fall Extension program, however, would not be able to participate. For example, if you were a Cal spring admit who chose to attend Berkeley City College instead of UC Extension for the fall semester, you could not participate in formal recruitment that year. I have no idea if that has changed or not, but from the posts, the policy seems to be the same.

I think pref is tonight! Good luck to all!