[DubaiSis]

And to play devil's advocate to my own post, just because sororities CAN turn away more members than recommended, it would be an anomaly to do so. My understanding is the big California schools take a lot of juniors because it is fairly commonplace to work your way through the community college ranks and have the huge fees for just 2 years.

Still, they CAN turn away older students, but I'm sure the university, Greek system and tradition would really frown upon it. You don't want huge fluctuations in numbers from year to year so you can rely on a tolerable amount of members leaving each year. It's tough on a chapter when you typically have 40 members graduate and suddenly you have 60 without your overall chapter size growing.

If my understanding of upper classmen quotas is correct as it applies to RFM, one could presume a certain percentage of upperclassmen will be invited back to each round of rush and that percentage will vary based on individual chapter strength. Now I'm not interested or qualified to go into a whole explanation of RFM, but I'd assume those return percentages are tighter than they are for freshmen with the same qualifications.

In short, quit worrying about it! What the rules say has little to do with any individual's personal outcome. Even if you have the grades, even if you're literally a beauty queen, even if your Daddy owns half of Texas, even if you're a freshman, you are not guaranteed a place (except for the 2 or 3 campuses that have guaranteed placement and they're VERY small schools if I recall). And being a 24 year old woof on scholarship doesn't automatically make you unable to get a bid. Admittedly it's unlikely, but I wouldn't spend any more time worrying about Membership Selection rules and traditions. You can't do anything about them anyway.