Is this ok?
 

Hi, all....I'm an alum from XYZ sorority, and my alma mater had their sorority recruitment a couple of weeks ago. I had a question for you guys about the way things happened.
Quota ended up being N, and some chapters ended up getting about 5-10 more than N. Is that ok? Does PC say that chapters can get more than quota?

quota additions are for girls who maximized all their options and ended up bidless. npc suggests that quota additions be no more than 5% of quota. it is legit, if not a little confusing.

Yes, that is entirely possible, and becoming more common. Many schools are adopting a "guaranteed matching" policy. It guarantees that a PNM who has made it with at least one chapter for preference round who has maximized her options throughout recruitment and ranks all of her preference party chapters will get a bid to one of those chapters. It's to discourage suiciding and to reward the women who "play fair" during recruitment. The release figure method forces chapters to trim their bid lists to maximize the number of chapters making quota and PNMs getting placed.

Note this is not a "guarantee a bid to any PNM who signs up for recruitment to the point where chapters have to argue who gets stuck with certain PNMs" policy. Only Tufts does that.

5% Quota additions are no longer the rule for NPC groups. I have seen QAs this year 10 or 15 over quota, particularly where the campus is using the Release Figures Method.

Don't forget that some chapters will also count the number of women they could snap bid or COR immediately after Formal Rush in their announcement. I've seen this happen mostly when that extra 2-3 women will bring the chapter to Total.

I think my alma mater uses release figures, but I thought it was supposed to help even-out the size of chapters and help smaller chapters.

we had a chapter take 11 over quota of 26. So I dont think that 5% could be the way they do it

Not especially, that is what the Release Figures Method is supposed to do. Quota additions are girls who mismatched during bid matching and you will typically see the most quota addtions at the strongest chapters - typically - your results could vary.

It does help even out the size as the larger, more successful groups are required to release more women earlier on in the process. I know of at least two groups at Albama that had to go from 800 to 300 in one day. That's a huge number to release but it let's the women know wher they stand much earlier. Used to soome groups would carry a lot of women up to pref just to inflate their numbers and it was not fair to the women that they didn;t invite back at the end. And with RFM, they do a quota range which allows the computer to run several scenarios and chose the one that places the most women. If you add to that the premise that all who maximize their opportunities will get a bid or that the university will place all who do so no matter what, then you get these larger numbers beyond quota...which is what happened in loveinxi's comment as I know that campus and belong to the group that took the 11 over quota. The old Quota Addition formula is no longer in use when a campus does RFM - which they all are supposed to be doing now.

It seems this new way of matching as many PNMs as possible has been hurting the smaller chapters more.
The smallest chapter on campus took about 5 under quota, and the largest took about 10 over quota. All this seems to do is put a wider gap between the two and make it more difficult, if it's possible at all, for the smaller chapter to catch up.
(And I also wanted to point out that these aren't large chapters, so 5-10 really makes a difference)

Perhaps it depends on the school. Although we don't have all the results from U of F for instance, of the two groups reporting the most over quota (whether through QA or snap bids we don't know) one was the smallest chapter and the other was below total as well last year (based on the numbers in the scholarship reports). U of F is fortunate to have 16 really great sororities and from an outsider's view it looks like RFM is helping to keep all of them strong.

Coming from a university with campus total of 75, I wouldn't necessarirly say that this hurts the small chapters more since the smaller chapters who fall under campus total can COB all year long while the larger chapters (at or above campus total) do not have this option and can only recruit during one week of the year.

Yep exactly. The smaller chapters can still be picking up women now to get up to total. If for some reason your panhel or school is preventing this, notify your regional panhel rep immediately.

release figures method
 

The new release figure method really does help smaller chapters because it requires chapters with higher return rates to release more women, especially earlier in recruitment. Thus, larger groups can not "string along" women that they have little intention on pledging.

The result is that more PNMs are staying in the system, perhaps giving some sororities a better look and finding happy homes...when they previously may have dropped out of recruitment when all of the "bigger houses" released them before pref.

It does make the quota and quota additions numbers look strange in some cases, but more chapters are making quota and we are pledging more women nationwide to our Greek Systems.

If the chapters are under 100 people, taking 10 QAs is WAY too much.

It almost sounds like even if girls were released from a sorority, they put it down on their bid card anyway. Are the sororities happy w/ the girls they got or are they looking at some of them going "WTF?"