First Formal Rush

[BabyP]

Before it was informal, now we have some money, we want to do a formal rush but how does it work. I see on the paper advertisement passed out by other greeks that they usually do an activity or meet someone everyday of the week and the last week is pref or interview. PLEASE any ideas or advice will be much appreciated!!!

[kateshort]

NOTE: This topic has been discussed many many many times in the Rush and Recruitment Stories threads.

BabyP, one thing you need to keep in mind is that most sororities' membership selection policies are secret. So it'll be difficult to get info on how to choose your members and how many to invite back. But you can still read a lot on how formal recruitment is done by other sororities.

I'd first start by seeing if other sororities on your campus have a formal recruitment period. (Not having read many threads by you, I'm not sure whether your campus has NPC sororities, local sororities, or a mixture of both, not do I know how many orgs you have.) If your campus has other orgs, you may wish to contact them and see if you all can band together to set up a formal recruitment period. You'd probably have to abide by a common set of rules if you do that, such as no talking to potential new members about the sorority unless you're at a recruitment event. Even if you don't/can't do recruitment with other orgs on your campus, you may want to make your recruitment similar to theirs if there's already a formal recruitment plan in place for those orgs.

What makes it "formal" are usually two things-- the fact that there are a number of sororities doing the same things at the same time, and that there is a reduction in how many orgs each PNM can choose and in how many PNMs each org can keep. If you're the only organization, there won't really be formal recruitment the way NPC talks about it.

What you should do next is to surf the Panhellenic websites of a number of universities-- Google for "Fall recruitment 2004" or something similar, and read how their weeks are structured.

You should then do a search of GreekChat and read the Recruitment Stories and Rush forums, since many PNMs will talk about how they had to decide to keep N sororities, or were cut by X sororities, or attended Y number of philanthropy parties and then were invited back to Z number of skit nights. That'll show you how recruitment appears to the PNM/rushee at a number of different campuses. Also check out the rush forum for discussion by sorority members of how to handle a philanthropy night, skit night, theme night, pref night, etcetera. That will give you ideas of how you might structure recruitment if your campus does not have formal recruitment.

AFTER you have surfed Google and read a number of threads on GC (i.e. done some homework on the issue), *then* you can come back with more details of how your campus has done things and how you'd like to do things from now on, and then ask for help with the nitty-gritty.

[33girl]

Originally posted by BabyP
Before it was informal, now we have some money, we want to do a formal rush but how does it work. I see on the paper advertisement passed out by other greeks that they usually do an activity or meet someone everyday of the week and the last week is pref or interview. PLEASE any ideas or advice will be much appreciated!!!

"Formal rush" as most NPC groups refer to it means girls going to every sorority, etc etc - I don't think that's what you mean. You want to have formally announced parties and a more concrete rush process - correct?

I would think that the parties get fancier as the week goes on - you'll have to develop some way with your sisters of evaluating candidates and think about how many people you want in your pledge class.