I guess I will be the first to chime in on Spring recruitment
We have formal structured recruitment the second week of spring classes. I really enjoyed going through recruitment in the spring. It gave me a chance to get to know the women who were rushing me outside of the confines of recruitment, and it let the women get to know me as well.
We weren't simply being judged on our ability to "interview" and our appearances-we were being looked at for how involved we are on campus, how we portray ourselves in our everyday life at Witt, and on our ability to survive our first semester of college. Similarly, we were able to see the sororities as more than just what the women rushing us portrayed themselves as. Even the chapter that seems the most superficial has women thriving in classes with me, and doing philanthropy, and being involved on campus. While we stereotypes more having gone through a semester, we can also see past them much easier.
As far as timing, I liked having recruitment during the second week of classes. It meant that we didn't need to move back in early (and sacrifice time off our 3 week break as PNMs) and that we kind of had a grip on our semester before we threw in hours of recruitment on top of our already busy schedules.
While I feel like a fall formal recruitment is a great way to get to know women on campus, I feel like spring recruitment was perfect for me.