A Friendly Old School Recruitment

[Storytime!]

Hey guys! I post on here under another name, but figured with recruitment just around the bend I would put up my (sort of) retro recruitment story. You may be able to figure out who my alterego is and where I went, but figured I’d take a shot an anonymity!

I went to a small school (3,000 undergrads) with a big greek life for the size and location (about 1/3 of students were greek) so recruitment was fairly competitive. I went through in the early/mid 2000s and our recruitment was deferred until January. We had 4 NPC chapters (one had just colonized in the fall), one local sorority and one engineering sorority that all participated in formal recruitment. Quota was determined by the number invited back to pref divided by 5 (the engineering sorority did not count), but there was no RFM, no QA and we were not guaranteed a bid even if we maximized our options. Quota was 22 (total was around 80-90 during my 4 years).

Friends was big at the time, so please enjoy my tale of recruitment with:

Phoebe
Monica
Joey
Rachel
Chandler
Ross

Our schedule was:
Saturday, Day 1 – Open House, all 6 chapters (25 min)
Sunday, Day 2 – Philanthropy, all 6 chapters (35 min)
Saturday, Day 3 – Third Party, up to 4 chapters (45 min)
Sunday, Day 4 – Pref, up to 2 chapters (60 min)

Every sorority had a house or dorm floor, but they were spread across campus, and it was January, so recruitment took place in our student center with each chapter in a different room.

I’m still not entirely sure how I got a through it because though my dad was in a fraternity in the 70s, greek life was not big in my friend group and family so I did not come into it with ANY idea of what to expect or do at the parties. Also, I was a swimmer and we had meets on day 1 and day 3 of recruitment so I wasn’t able to attend half the parties (there were 5 of us from the team going through, and there were 3 basketball players and a couple indoor track runners that were in the same situation).

My orientation leader was a Phoebe, my RA had joined Rachel during their colonization in the fall, and a girl 1 year ahead of me in high school was a Monica, but because swimming took up A LOT of my time in the fall and no actives were on the team, I didn’t know much about the chapters beyond the stereotypes freshmen pick up here and there. Also, facebook was just getting started and myspace was still sort of a thing, so there wasn’t a lot of rumor mongering about the chapters going on online (the good old days).

So sit back and enjoy me demonstrating things not to do during recruitment!