PNMs Being a "Good Fit"
 

We talk a lot on GC about whether or not a PNM was a 'good fit' for a group. I don't think that's applicable with the big chapters because most are really diverse and when they say they released someone because she wasn't a good fit, it's a euphemism for another reason.

But how do you think chapters define 'a good fit'? The reason I'm asking: I have seen PNMs change so much in their first couple of years and grow to be like their chapters. Some haven't had the advantages that others have had but if someone takes them under their wing, they blossom. I'm not talking, say, about major Goths but maybe about girls from smaller towns. A year in those chapters and those girls might grow to be very much like them.

Or I've known athletic chapters to cut girls because "they're not very athletic". Maybe their school hardly gave them any opportunities to play sports--mine certainly didn't. They could blossom and excel in sports.

I don't think anyone ought to shed their true personality and become a carbon copy. It's just that the phrase 'she wasn't a good fit' bothers me a lot because college freshman are still so unformed and I hate to see them cut for a lame reason, although I do acknowledge that sometimes it's true.

I don't think it's a euphemism at all. Sometimes someone just DOESN'T fit - and it has nothing to do with growing and changing or being a copy of the rest of the sorority.

It's like when a guy is cute, has a good job, good family, is super nice - but you don't feel attracted to him in the least. He looks good on paper, but that little "something" isn't there.

i think that sometimes the pnm comes across as not being a good fit-she's having an off day or party. i do think that the vast majority of members could be extracted from their sorority and placed in another sorority on their campus-especially if it is a large campus with lots of sororities-and the sorority nor the girl would miss a beat. on the other hand, there are certain girls who would not fit and consequently, would not be happy in certain chapters on their campus.

how many times do we remember meeting a girl during recruitment and saying to our sisters, as an aside, "see that girl over there? she is such abc material." and lo and behold, the pnm ends up pledging abc.

I know they sometimes REALLY don't fit, like the girl who went to my school who decided she's a witch and wore long purple robes--and then decided to rush.:confused:Or the orange and purple girl I posted about on "Weird Rush Stories". I also know that the 'good fit' line can be used in place of 'we think she'd be happier someplace else' or just 'no way in H'.

I'm having a hard time putting this into words. I can't figure out, especially in a big recruitment, why 'Amanda' gets cut from ABC and 'Ashley' doesn't and they appear to be cut from the same cloth. A few years back, a girl from the next town rushed at an SEC school. She dressed kind of skanky but she wasn't really. Her parents were nice but country. You would figure she wouldn't get a bid from a so-called classy group but she did and as a senior, she's now a very refined woman.

I've seen this kind of thing happen quite a bit but I can't figure out how the sororities decide, "Yeah, this one has some promise, let's go with her," and look at the next one like her and say, "No way," and then decide on the whole that they don't have time to deal with anyone else who doesn't fit their current reputation!

How does anyone decide who has promise? And I wonder if many groups do that or only take people who are like them right now.

I was under the impression that we weren't supposed to talk about membership selection in a public forum. And I see this topic as something that can be discouraging to nervous PNM's.

I don't. If you think along those lines, half the threads on GC could scare them.

Anyway, I'm not asking for membership selection info, of all things. This is more like a rhetorical question. As a professor, I've grown to see most freshmen as practically embryos--they change so much in 4 years! But I'm no expert in figuring out that this one will change this way and that one will stay pretty much the same.

Isn't the point of a rhetorical question that it doesn't really have an answer? To answer your question, my sorority has a way of seeing who has promise and who doesn't. However, that is meant to only be known by ASA's. And let's leave it at that. :)

No one can answer that though because even if chapter A does thing one way, and chapter B does it another, neither one can talk about it.

Oh, I think in a big recruitment - LSU/Bama etc - the "she's not a good fit" is completely BS. This might be an offensive thing to say to some people, but I think there are more similarities between the sororities at those type places than there are differences. Smaller schools and smaller groups are a different matter.

i see what you mean-maybe the pnm got lucky and got hostesses who were adept at reading people, and were able to hold good, "real" conversations with the pnm, and they looked past her outfits and saw her potential-kind of like eliza doolittle? then again, had she gotten one of the chapter members who is more quick to size someone up, she would have been out of there like a shot.

as for similar girls-looks, grades, resume, recs. family history-who knows??
maybe pnm A had an enemy in the camp who did not want her asked back, while noone knew pnm B, so she got asked back. maybe the two girls were not as similar as they appear on the surface-maybe pnm A was a partier, but if was not common knowledge. maybe pnm A was rude to her rusher, or seemed disinterested.

Agreed. You have chapter AB with 200 girls and chapter CD with the same and how can they not be diverse? How can someone at a big school look at a girl and say she's a born AB? At one school I attended, if you saw a girl who'd been a great leader in high school, you might say she was destined to be a member of 1 of 2 certain chapters; if she was drop dead gorgeous, you would say that she was sure to be in 1 of 2 other groups. Actually, she might end up in any group because all had members like all 4 of those.

But the phrase "good fit", especially in the case of a huge school, is really starting to bother me.

That's another thing - it seems like the bigger the chapter and rush, the fewer sorority members you (you = rushee) get to actually meet. If you get paired with a sister you have NOTHING in common with, it doesn't seem to matter if everyone else in the chapter would love you, if that sister and you just don't click. Even if she introduces you to other sisters, her negative opinion of you will probably come through.

Now this really is getting too close to MS so I'll stop there.

As a mother, if a Pi Phi chapter dropped one of your daughters, would you rather they told you that it was because she wasn't a good fit for their chapter or it was because she had the personality of a pile of bricks, talked about inappopriate topics, and chewed with her mouth open?

I think a lot of it comes down to who you meet. If a PNM gets a bad rusher who doesn't know what questions to ask, the PNM will have to be the one working hard to make conversation, and she will look boring if she doesn't, and therefore, not a good fit. If this happens during the first round and the PNM only met the one girl, she'll probably get cut if this is a competitive chapter, even if a better rusher would have clicked with her and let her shine.

ETA: I can think of a few people who joined a chapter that I absolutely loved during recruitment, but cut me before preference. I used to wonder, why them and not me? Honestly, now I know I would not have been a good fit there; it just seemed to me that it was home, which was why it stung when I was cut.

ETA: I've said this before, at a big school, there is often more than one place where a PNM would be a good fit. I think I would have been happy in any of 3 other chapters had I not received a bid from Sigma Kappa. Just because there are multiple places that I would be a good fit doesn't mean there aren't places that I would be a bad fit, because there certainly are chapters where I wouldn't fit in. Sure, I have friends in pretty much every chapter, but just because I am friends with a few individuals doesn't mean the chapter is for me.

I think it is similiar to a job interview - you have two applicants who look the same on paper; same credentials, etc. - but when you meet with them one impresses you as being more of what you had in mind.
I don't know that it ultimately can be objective. By its very nature, formal recruitment forces you to make some value judgements about pnms that may or may not be 100% accurate. Most of the time, it seems to me, it works out.
Then again, who gets married thinking anything other than this is the one??? And sometimes, he/she is - and sometimes, you made an error in judgement!:rolleyes: