[crescent&pearls]

Quota/total was used in the 1950's. How much earlier than that I'm not sure!

One thing I remember from my history book was that prior to the formation of NPC, ribbon pinning or "pledging" girls that had not yet graduated from high school was a common practice. Apparently some chapters exerted considerable pressure on their hometown friends and relatives in the practice.

I don't know for sure but I think that by the 1920s most NPC orgs had adopted pledge pins and probably were involved in campus Panhellenics that held a more formalized "rush" process. NPC also set standards for the type of campus open to NPC groups- it had to be a four year college or university, not a "finishing school" or boarding school like the one my grandmother attended in Texas after WW1! She was definitely of the generation when very few women applied to, were accepted or were able to attend college. One of her greatest gifts to me, and one that made her so prous, was purchasing my sorority pin! She just thought it was so amazing that my mother and I were both college graduates, something that in her day, was really something only men really aspired to do!