Daughter decided to drop out of recruitment - need advice
 

Hi everyone. First of all, I'm not a Greek so I apologize in advance if I have any terms wrong. Would like your advice in this situation.

My daughter is a transfer student who just got to (a very large, state school) campus and at first decided to go through recruitment. She wasn't sure it was right for her and was very nervous about not getting settled in first before going through with it and expressed this to some of the new friends she had made before recruiting started. I'm not sure if this contributed to the fact that she was only asked back to one house - but it didn't really matter to her because it was the house she was most interested in anyway.

At any rate, she got very nervous about the whole thing and decided to drop out of recruitment. (She was a little overwhelmed just starting at this new, giant school, coming from a small one!) She had already found out that the house she wanted asked her back again (it was the event right before bid night) so she was still in the game.

Now she is talking about maybe going through informal rush in the spring. However, she is concerned that the house she is interested in will think that she dropped out of rush because they were the only ones who asked her back and of course it had nothing to do with that as she is still most interested in joining this house. How does she make the sisters aware of this? What is appropriate? Anything she should do to make this happen for herself in the spring? (Also, do the sisters of that house know that they were her only house left? If so, then she feels like they must think she dropped out because of that.)

Thank you to all in advance for the advice!

She needs to get to know women in this chapter. If she is a known quantity, that will be less of a problem. They will know her story and won't have to assume anything. It's hard to give any concrete advice without knowing the campus, but this is always good practice.

Thank you. She does know two of the women in the chapter - is it appropriate to say that she just felt she needed to get settled in first before rushing and that she is really interested in joining their sorority in the spring? Or is that being too presumptuous.

The campus is in the North, if that helps. No one gets recs or anything like that.

I think it would be fine to share that with the sisters that she felt overwhelmed by the process. Transferring from a smaller school to a larger school can be overwhelming. One way to make a large campus feel smaller is to go Greek. I wish her the best of luck and hopes she gets a chance to join a sisterhood--while keeping an open mind.

The house that she still had the invitation for does not know that they were her only invitation when she stopped out of rush.

Some, but not all of them, will know that they invited her back & she declined. That may or may not work against her next time around. It will be critical for her to make sure they know what happened in order to have a chance at joining the sorority later. Sure hope that she is able to connect with several of the girls in this chapter & get to know them, so they can speak up for her if/ when she rushes again.

If I'm reading the OP correctly, she did not decline any invitations.

In any case, if your daughter is still interested, and she'd consider COB this semester, you should have her contact the Greek Life office now. Depending on the campus, there might be chapters that want to quietly fill a few spots very shortly after bid day.

Then what did you understand these statements to mean?

"At any rate, she got very nervous about the whole thing and decided to drop out of recruitment. (She was a little overwhelmed just starting at this new, giant school, coming from a small one!) She had already found out that the house she wanted asked her back again (it was the event right before bid night) so she was still in the game. "

You don't "drop out of recruitment" if you don't have invitations. If she was "still in the game, " then she still had invitations when she dropped out.

Oh, I misread "some" in your post as "some chapters," not "some members of the chapter." I thought you were talking about the other chapters she didn't return to.

Here's the important question: is this chapter (the one she's interested in) going to be participating in informal recruitment in the spring? You don't know that, and neither do we. If the chapter is above total, they won't be taking additional members until the next formal recruitment period (next fall, based on what you wrote). So she'd have to wait until next fall and try again.

Thank you for the input - I will pass it onto her!