I went through formal recruitment, which takes place over four days right before second semester. The third day is when the rest of the campus moves in, though. Anyway, on the fourth day, we attend preference parties in the afternoon and then we are on silence - which is really hard when all your friends who
didn't go through recruitment have moved back into your dorm and are being all chatty! Members of Panhel "patrol" the dorm halls to make sure none of us are talking to anyone.
Anyway, if you got a bid, a member of Panhel will come knock on your door at 7pm-ish and as soon as that happens, you put on shoes and a coat and book it, I mean book it, "up the hill", which is literally up the hill from where the dorms are to Central Hall to the dean's floor, where they assemble all the girls. The girls all open their bid cards at one time and then run down the three flights of stairs and out of Central Hall. I don't know where all the other sororities meet their new members, but Pi Phis stand right at the steps of Central Hall and the Kappas wait at the bottom of the hill near their house.
My roommate and I both went through formal and when we got the knock, thankfully the girls told us both at the same time that we had received bids so we could run together. We both knew that it was Pi Phi, since it was the only one on my list, and she was a legacy. When we got our bid cards, they had our names handwritten on the front, so we located all the other girls with the same handwriting and stood with them, because we knew we were all Pi Phis.
Then we ran down the stairs into a gaggle of our new sisters, and the rest is history!