Thanks, reverie, for bringing up this subject again. I go to a deffered recruitment school in the midwest, and think that the deffered system has pros and cons. Deffered at Hillsdale is just for the freshmen - sophomores, etc. go through informal recruitment in September, and we also have a fall COB period.
I like deffered recruitment because it gives the PNMs a chance to settle into school and kind of figure themselves out before something as huge as recruitment. Also, it gives us a chance to get to know the freshmen girls. We have a "Coke date" system, which is antiquated, but fairly useful for our purposes.
Deffered also has its problems. As mentioned before, the PNMs have all kinds of ideas put in their heads during first semseter from other people on campus (Greeks, independents, their freshmen friends, and even professors and administrators) about which "identity" is assigned to each house, so to speak. This means that they start recruitment with all these preconceptions/misconceptions, and tend to buzz waaaay too much amongst themselves about them. There isn't much that Panhel can do to counteract these opinions and rumors, and I think it's always going to be a problem with deffered recruitment.
Additionally, the deffered system tends to hurt our numbers. It seems like every year, about half the girls who were initially coming to our Coke dates and attending the Panhel roundtables have decided, by Recruitment time, that their plates are too full already. Many freshmen are
totally with college by the end of first semester - academics, clubs, IM sports, friends, boyfriends, etc. - and they think that going through Recruitment and joining a Greek house would be just one more thing to deal with. So, they don't go through Recruitment at all.... When in reality, joining a house can help them learn time management skills, etc. - additionally, after first semester, things tend to "calm down" a bit.
However, the afforementioned problem does help our informal recruitment - all those girls who were too stressed out freshmen year for Recruitment come back sophomore year much more relaxed and eager to have the fun Greek experiences their friends are having.
Until this year, the fraternities at my school also had a deffered rush, with an informal rush for upperclassmen in the fall. Because they were hurting for numbers, though, the dean of men and IFC agreed to allow freshmen to rush first semester. I think I can safely say that it worked out really well for them and boosted their numbers a great deal. However, I know in each house there were a couple of freshmen inelligable for initiation because of their grades - presumably, these guys needed a semester to get their academic heads on straight, so to speak, before they got into major extracurricular commitments like Greek life.
Oh, and I forgot to mention: We do our deffered Recruitment during Christmas break. Generally the campus opens again on a Sunday in January, registration takes places Monday and Tuesday, and classes start on a Wednesday. We do Recruitment on Saturday-Tuesday so the PNMs don't have to worry about classes, etc.
Oh yeah, and I hate reading fun recruitment stories on GC in August when I have to wait until January for our recruitment!!
(Appologies for the length of this post!)