'Informal Recruitment'?
 

Hello,

I'm currently a freshmen at Penn State. I didn't participate in Fall Formal Recruitment because I didn't think I would have enough time, since I'm studying engineering, and because I had some misconceptions about what sororities are like. I would like to join one now :)

I was under the impression that I'd have to wait until next Fall to rush and try my chances as a Sophomore. Our Panhellenic does a Spring Informal Recruitment, but typically only 2-3 sororities participate out of 18 chapters and 3 associate chapters, those that didn't get enough accepted bids in the Fall. However, this year I have been hearing talk about how nearly all the sororities are participating in Spring Informal this year, something about how a new sorority on campus has so much more members than everyone else, so the other chapters need to bulk up numbers.

Panhellenic hasn't released the specific chapters participating yet, it should be out sometime this month. If the chapters I'm interested in are all participating, I'd like to rush next semester and if not I'll wait till Fall. Do you ladies have any tips about how to handle an Informal Recruitment? Would rushing as a second semester Freshman better my chances than rushing as a Sophomore? I've only ever heard advice about Formal, and Panhellenic doesn't have any information on their website since we don't usually do Spring Recruitment here.

Thanks for reading!

Informal is a much more relaxed, less structured( usually) situation than formal. Why not give it a try, no matter which groups are able to participate. At the least you can hone your conversation skills. At the greatest you will find a match and not have to wait another semester.

I went through informal. Would have probably been terrified by the matching outfits and singing/chants during formal. :D I will argue to my grave that you can get a truer sense of a group via informal rush.

Formal rush, particularly at big Greek schools is a necessary evil. There is just no way to get that many girls placed in that many chapters without it taking literally weeks or months if they did it the informal way. And the result would be wildly smaller chapters.

If you have an opportunity to be in a sorority and bypass formal rush I would jump at the chance. All the benefits of sisterhood, none of the matching outfits. And you get to see the smaller chapters for what they are; smaller chapters. Not deformed, not worse. Just smaller. And in most cases, the amount "smaller" wouldn't even be noticeable without counting heads in a photo.

Delta Phi Epsilon was supposed to recolonize at Penn State this year. With the edit button gone, it's hard to tell from LaneSig's thread what happened with that, but it sounds like they were allowed to take over total, and now maybe total went up, allowing existing groups to informally recruit in the winter? Does anyone know anything about Penn State and if the OP is hearing this correctly? Usually total is adjusted after formal recruitment, and then the colonizing group is told how many new members they can take (total plus a small cushion, usually), so there wouldn't be a change in total again after the colonization, leading to a need for informal winter recruitment so other chapters can rise to a new total. Just wondering....:)

I believe we are scheduled for recolonization in Fall 2016.

Phi Sig took 201 in their colonization, but that was last year. Total is 203 now.

I fully agree with you, but there has to be a way to process scores of women through some sort of recruitment process.

I know, I know. Sigh. ;) Informal is great for women who wouldn't normally go through, but do have the desire to become committed sisters. I originally had bad stereotypes of sorority women in my head, but working on campus in a dept that dealt with them showed me the good and bad. I worked in the office that handled reservations for the room meetings (we didn't have houses, but suites--we now have townhouses) and chose not to rush the ones with sisters who were snippy with me, but I also came across very nice girls.