Hmmm... Maybe it's just that there are so few sororities at my school. It's hard to have top, middle, and bottom tier sororities if there are only 5.
Rushees often perceive AEPhi initially as a weak sorority simply because our numbers are low relative to the other sororities on campus - and some of them make a snap decision to drop us for that reason. But if they stick through our rush parties through pref, they see that we are just as involved on campus and in the community, just as strong academically, and have just as strong a bond of sisterhood as the other 4 sororities have - and a LOT of my chapter sisters listed AEPhi first on their pref cards.
And then there are the women who focus all their energy on some of the other 4 sororities, only to get cross-cut. Essentially, they have 3 choices: look at AEPhi, wait for next fall and hope for the best (and sophomores are rarely offered bids), or don't join a sorority. And hey, it doesn't hurt to look, right?
lauradav, we used the Sorush program too - it's awful. When I was a rho chi, one of my rushees got cut from a house she should have been invited back to, because she had the same name as another girl, and the sorority just provided a list of names instead of their assigned ID numbers. It worked out well though - she wound up joining that sorority
That really falls under the category of human error, though.