How many schools have trouble placing juniors etc?
 

I was wondering how pervasive the problem was that juniors and seniors can't get bids because of the way formal rush and the quota system works.

Give me an idea of how many campuses?

Not mine!

(University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Yeah, that's right, the big one.

Are you referring to campuses where absolutely no junior or senior would ever receive a bid, or just ones where being a junior or senior would be significantly less likely to receive a bid?

Juniors can generally get a bid here, especially if they are transfer students, but I would be genuinely surprised if any of the sororities accepted a senior.

When I helped with rush at DePaul University in Chicago (which has, as I understand it, a pretty small Greek system without houses) it was put this way by someone: If you're a junior, unless you're a rock star you get cut. Most of the sophomores got cut as well, at least by what seemed to be considered the two "top" houses.

Maybe someone can explain the why of this to me. If people DON'T cut juniors, they will stay in rush, raising quota ... so everyone can take a junior or two, and it's not an issue of a junior "instead" of a freshman.

On my campus, this was not a problem at all, but usually juniors or seniors would join though informal, since they already knew the chapters.

Theoretically, yes - but quota is usually set based on how many PNMs attend pref parties, so that presupposes that the juniors don't get cut before that point.

If 100 freshmen sign up for rush, and XYZ's return rates are such that they have to release 50% after round 1, ok, they're inviting back 50 freshmen. If 100 freshmen and 50 juniors sign up for rush, they'd have to release 75 PNMs (50%), and they could decide to release all the juniors and 25 of the freshmen.

I wish separate junior/senior or soph/junior/senior quotas were more widely used... it's a shame that at so many schools, if you don't get in freshman year, forget it. :(

My roommate was told by girls from 4 groups here that the only reason she was cut was because she was a junior.

Okay this is just a campus rule, but I like it a lot (I'm a little biased as it is the school I am from). Juniors have never really had a problem getting a bid because during formal recruitment we don't count them in quota, they're free so to speak (they do count for total. It does make houses that already have quota bigger, but for some reason it doesn't bother me.