trouble getting girls to sign up for formal rush
 

Formal rush is going to be so small. We are not a big greek school but quota is normal 33 to 35. I think we are only going to get maybe 15 at the most because barely any girls signed up for rush. Is everyone having this problem? We had a great turn out for informal rush with 15 girls but formal rush is always bigger then informal. I just don't get it :confused:

I think girls are getting tired of formal rush, period. They think it's "fake" and if they're going to join would rather do it through informal (although I don't think this has hit the South yet). But I don't have any idea if this is just a short-term trend that will change, or if it is a permanent shift that Panhels had better adjust to.

If formal is second semester, though, that means the chapters have to work crazy hard first semester promoting sorority life ... and have candidates for informal bids in mind even before formal rush begins.

At the University of Puget Sound (a smaller liberal arts school) we actually saw the number increase this year after decreases the past few years (but still not as high as they had hoped for). We also saw a higher informal number as well. But, I believe, we have a pretty "casual" Formal recruitment in comparison to other schools.

Not exactly the answer you hoped for........

Freshman can only rush second semester. It just seems like the freshman are not interested. When I rushed my Freshman year there was over 300 of us and now there is only 150 or less rusing. There are 7 sororities on my campus that participate in formal rush and one of them you have to have a certain major to get in.Oh well we will get to know the girls better but I might not get a little again! :(

We have spring formal recruitment too. The trend might be heading down, who knows.

Sorry. Good Luck though!

Is the signup period over or can they also sign up when they get back to school? If it's the latter, I would not be worried yet - women may be waiting for grades/parental approval/seeing if they are transferring. Especially if there's a signup fee. And there are people are "putter-offers" - if they do it too early and have too much time to think about it they'll chicken out.

Just look at it this way, you'll be able to open bid more girls. I always found that I could get to know what girls were really like during open bidding because the atmosphere was more relaxed and I got to spend more one on one time with them.

I know what you're saying. My school is not a big Greek school either and this spring quota is set at 3. Only 24 girls came out and there are 8 sororities (but there are 7000 students & 60%+ of them are female) Plus a few of those initial 24 can't actually pledge because of grades or have since dropped out for other reasons. I really don't know why this is because my school is mid sized and we have had more girls out for formal rush in the past....maybe we'll get more next year...I don't know, I guess its just one of those things...

Livvy8....
 

...where do you go to school?:confused:

We have deferred formal recruitment too. For the last couple years, numbers were way down. Quota was only like 5!! This year, the Panhellenic went out dorm storming TOGETHER, assigning 2 sororities a night to visit dorms. They also held sign ups ALL OVER campus instead of just in the Student Union. They ended up nearly doubling the number of girls going through.

We do formal in the spring and have seen interest be high one year and low the next. Last year quota was 8 this year 13...it hurts the chapters I know getting to total if they aren't there already but I hope yours is not hurt too much if interest stays low! Good luck!

i hate formal recruitment
i hate decorating for 20 or less girls to come through
and by the end of it, 10 girls have dropped out(they have a rule that you have to come to the entire rush or you can't come at all)
however, formal recruitment is somewhat fake but it's only with some sororities

so, this year i begged our panhell to send out flyers
we handed out hot cocoa during the winter with go greek stickers on them
all of the sororities made signs to hang around campus
every week, one sorority and one fraternity have an informational table out

Has your Panhellenic ever done a survey of women not participating in recruitment to see why that is? It might help give insight into whether they aren't interested, if they have negative perceptions of sororities, etc. We have done this, and have found that many women don't participate on our campus due to the objection of parents or boyfriends.

To add to BSUPhiSig's train of thought....

If the reason would turn up the girls have already found their niche...and a sorority ain't it, I would suggest proposing 1st semester recruitment to your campus Panhellenic. If you talk with your headquarters, I'm sure they have some kind of statement in reference to this. From my understanding, most NPC sororities are in favor of this.


But I may be jumping the gun...

One of the things our campus Panhel did was give out some kind of gift to the freshman women during registration. Because it had all of the sororities' names on it, it was ok to give out. Although they may not say, "A free water bottle! I'm in!", it will let them know that this an activity option from day 1.

As an alumna "helper" at my chapter's recruitment this year, I know that our university was having a very tough time recruiting women to go through formal recruitment. At a meeting for the sororities the night before recruitment began, the Greek advisor gave everyone an extra hour and a half of talking to women (this is during limited silence, mind you!) to encourage women to go through recruitment. The Rho Gammas went dorm-storming to drum up interest, and I know that the numbers did rise, from something like 65 to around 88 (I think). We're a really small school with seven sororities, so quota is usually around 10 or so. I know also that the Greek advisor during that meeting said if the numbers didn't start to improve, recruitment might be changed to a sophomore year deferred rush, which would really hurt a lot of the sororities...especially those who are pretty close to total and lose large numbers of women each year. Our chapter has been pretty consistent (we're also one of the smallest chapters), but next year the chapter is graduating 17 SENIORS out of about 35 women! That's really going to hurt!:(