Recruitment Shortened, Fee Reduced: Kansas State U ("K-State")
 

Looks like NPC recruitment this year is one day shorter and around $100 cheaper. There'll be a few other changes, too :

http://www.kstatecollegian.com/chang...less_stressful

332?!?!?!?!? $225???????!!!!!!!!?????????!!!!!!!!

Is that the norm ???

A lot depends on the school, but it's not totally uncommon. For schools that have recruitment before classes start, a large chunk of that fee goes towards housing and food costs. They get to move into the residence halls a week early.

ETA: I just looked at the K-State recruitment website and noticed the fee is broken down into two parts: $165 registration fee (which most likely covers the housing/food/small administrative costs) and $60 New Member fee, which all sorority new members pay to Panhellenic. If a member does not finish the recruitment process, that $60 is refunded.

I'm sure a lot of people considered long and hard before making these changes--at least I hope they did! Certainly lopping over $100 off the registration costs can only improve PNM participation, and I can see other benefits as well.

Having said that, I think it's pretty disingenuous for Greek Affairs to tout this new schedule as "less stressful." Someone please tell me how cramming all 11 parties into one day can be construed as easier on either sororities or PNM's?! Obviously the whole week is compressed. I haven't seen the schedule, but if things are unchanged from the discussions I heard last spring, "pref night" parties will be in the morning of Day 4, and bids will be distributed that same afternoon/evening. I've talked to a few actives, and most are less than enthusiastic. Are any of you using a similar schedule, and what do you think about it?

Iowa State has always had the PNMs visit all the NPC chapters on campus the first day. When I went through, it was 15 parties that were approximately 15-20 minutes each, with 10 minutes between parties to go from house to house.

Two chapters have since closed, so the PNMs now visit 13 chapters the first day. According to the tentative schedule posted on the Iowa State Greek Affairs website, the first party starts at 8:35 and the last party ends at 5:10, with just over an hour for lunch. The rest of the week is much less compressed.

I can't comment on prefs/bid day being the same day, but I know there are some campuses who do have that schedule and it seems to work for them.

ETA: Here's the schedule. It looks as though they are trying out prefs/bid day on the same day.

I don't think I would want to be an active member with that recruitment schedule. Unless they have membership selection down to a science, I would think it would be pretty rushed. Plus the panhel execs that are running recruitment don't have much extra time if there are any problems with the computers.

with that schedule I bet all the girls involved are going to be exhausted by bid day. Our recruitment last year (UIUC) was over 2 weekends right at the beginning of school. We had parties/pref-ing until midnight or later on some days which was no fun at all.

I cannot imagine going to a large school....

We have 5 Sororities so we do pref and bid day on the same day. Pref started around 10 and the bids were handed out around 6-7pm.

I liked it that way because of the anxiety waiting another day to find out which women we got...but that obviously only works with small schools :)