Vandy rush
 

Someone had asked how Vandy rush went, but I can't find the thread. An article is in today's Hustler on the topic. I'm too lazy to type it all, but it says that fewer women got bids this year because more SIPed. Last year, 534 registered and 496 completed, whereas this year 518 registed and 478 completed. (If I did the math right, last year 93% completed, and this year 92% did, which is hardly a statistically significant trend! So even if more women suicided, it didn't cut down much on bids; only 25 girls made it to pref and ended up bidless.) The freshman class was also slightly smaller than last year, so the number of rushees being down isn't very significant, either.

Do these numbers sound weird to anyone else? Vandy is supposed to be a very competitive rush, so how do only 8 percent of girls go bidless? Even at my undergrad school, where rush was so not competitive, the dropout rate was higher (and in both cases it was spring rush). If nothing else, since you register in the fall, I would think more girls would be cut for first semester grades than that.

edited to add: The article says 25 girls went bidless after pref, which means only 15 girls were cut from rush before pref.

Re: Vandy rush
 

They don't sound weird to me. I don't equate competitive rush with the number of girls who go bidless. I think of the return rates for top chapters when I think of competitiveness, but that's just me. Even schools with highly competitive rushes have a chapter or 2 that are under total and/or quota. To me it is the campus culture - when so many PNMs want the same top chapters, and those chapters fight for the same top PNMs. That's just how I think of it though. I guess an example I would think of would be Oklahoma, which I think has a very competitive rush. The return rates for the "Top 5" are nearly 100%, and to get a bid to those chapters you must have recs and connections, but there are 4 other houses that consistently take quota and then 2 which typically are under quota and total. Very few women go bidless because even though they might not get "Top 5" they still accept bids to the other chapters. Like I said, that's just my perception.

I always assumed competitive meant lots of girls going bidless, but I never actually thought to ask when someone said their campus was "competitive." It seems to me that every campus has "desirable" chapters with return rates near 100% and others that never meet quota, even if it's not the sort of place that requires recs and connections. :confused:

On GC when people say that at their campus you can wear what you want, you can hold out for COB if you want, and recs aren't necessary - to me that equals uncompetitive recruitment. To me, campusus where you have to have the right connections (which goes way beyond having recs) to get into certain chapters, that is competitive. I never equated it with girls going bidless because there are usually those chapters that don't have the same entrance requirements on that particular campus, that the otherwise bidless girls can get into. It goes beyond some chapters being more desirable than others - every campus has that. When you have girls that seemingly have everything going for them, yet they still cannot get a bid to a top chapter on campus for lack of the right connections, that is competitive.

(And I am not endorsing the ultra-competitive - just explaining how I see it.)

That's generally how I define it...at my school you can ALWAYS get a bid somewhere if you want, but there's such an unfortunate (and unwarranted) disparity between the top three or four chapters and lesser-desired four chapters. We lose between 35-45% of PNMs every year because SO many PNMs just will not consider the "bottom" 4 houses. Our rush has been described as "cutthroat," but that's because so many girls drop out rather than accept a bid from a weaker chapter. We don't require recs or any connections so it's the PNMs' attitudes that makes our recruitment competitive.

Re: Vandy rush
 

You read Hustler?

-Rudey
--That's awesome

Haha The Hustler is our School Newspaper.. and it was out before the other hustler became a little more famous than us ;)

As for Vanderbilt Recruitment results, I think all the sororities made quota (42) with the exception of AOPi, AChiO, and DG.

AOII achieved quota shortly after FR.