[violetpretty]

"Casual" for informal sorority recruitment in winter = neatly styled hair, natural makeup, nice jeans, nice and reasonably modest sweater/blouse/top, nice flat shoes/boots. I would not advise a PNM at ANY school, no matter how "laid back" the school is, to show up at recruitment without makeup and without styling her hair.

Although you were told that "they didn't base bids on the way you look", this is true, but not in the sense you're thinking of. It's true in the sense that not every chapter will only take size 4 and under beauty queens. However, good personal presentation IS something that chapters will consider. That means looking polished, looking like the best version of yourself. I can see how you might find that misleading.

Unfortunately, because you said you "were not planning on going that day" and "didn't have time to change" that basically tells the chapter that joining a sorority is not a priority for you and/or that you show up to class looking like a bum (also something sororities don't like). If you were more interested, you'd plan on going, and you might have worn your "sorority casual" clothes/hair/makeup all day, knowing you wouldn't have time to change.

All recruitment is a numbers game, but during informal recruitment, every chapter is only allowed to give bids to reach a certain size. That number may be very small, and it doesn't matter how many women go through recruitment. It is possible a chapter liked you but liked (and got to know) X number of women better than you.

Did you go to an event at each chapter that was participating? You said you went to 4 events, and that there are 5 chapters at your school (of course not all might be participating). Were these events for 4 different chapters or did you go to more than one event for one or more chapters?