Well, it's going to change depending on what type of school you are writing it at. When I was in school at USC, this is how it went:
Sunday: Kick-Off in the quad, every house had a booth
Monday: Open houses, every fraternity was required to stay on the row. Rushees could visit as many or as few houses as they wanted. Fraternities would have catered food (Morton's, Hawaiian luau, In-n-Out) or attractions like casino night to persuade rushees to stop by.
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday: Rush events, almost always off campus. These would differ by fraternity and were always free for the rushees. Examples: hockey games, baseball games, basketball games, hookah lounge, shooting range, dinner at nice restaurant, bowling, indoor skydiving, comedy club, paintball, etc. Each house was allowed to pick one night where girls could come. Everything had to be dry officially, but that certainly didn't stop drinking from going on with the top rushees behind doors.
Rushees would pick which houses they wanted and usually focus on just their favorite. Some houses would be really good at cutting those they didn't want early, some would string them along forever. If you picked the wrong house and they didn't let you know early enough, it would indeed be too late to get invited to another house's Blue Chip. You'd have to wait until the next semester.
Generally everybody would be invited after Monday, and then cuts would begin. Those still in the running would get phone calls about where and when to show up...almost always at the house, and then actives would drive the rushees to the event (the best rushers and best cars transporting the most sought after rushees, of course). Some houses would even do cuts after Monday, and only invite selected rushees to the first event.
Friday: Blue Chip Dinner. This was a really formal dinner, usually at a very expensive restaurant or the house of an impressive alumnus. Suits were required. Some houses would do heavy cuts before and then bid everybody in attendance, some would invite a wider range of guys and then do heavy cuts after this night...it all depended on the chapter's voting culture. There were usually formal speeches from the rush chair, the president and prominent alumni. Think the fraternity equivalent of pref.
Saturday: Rushees would get phone calls. Usually "no" calls came out first (if they did at all, some houses just didn't call those they were not giving bids to). Yes calls would get a call to go to the house (usually pretending that they still needed to answer some more questions before they could get an answer). Generally pledge initiation would take place followed by a group dinner, and then a party later in the night.
Hope that helps.
Last edited by DTD Alum; 04-03-2011 at 04:16 PM.
Reason: added another paragraph
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