IrishPipes' Retro Recruitment Story

[TSteven]

Originally Posted by irishpipes

First stage results

Next day, back at the classroom, our Rho Chis hand us each a sheet of paper with abbreviations for all of the chapters that have invited us back for second stage. We can circle up to 8. It is hard to decipher at first because the list doesn’t use Greek letters in the abbreviations. This was confusing to a lot of us because we were struggling with the Greek letters as it was, and there were so many chapters to keep straight.


I am positive that many rushees confused chapters with similar names simply because the whole process was so huge and overwhelming.

I can well image that it would be confusing.

Do you think it would it have been helpful to have some sort of visual aid in the room when ranking? Perhaps pictures of each house and the corresponding letters/abbreviations? It seems like it might be easier to link the chapter (members) to the physical house (the blue one with the orange trim) than just to letters (abbreviations).

[FSUZeta]

tsteven, those are good suggestions.

when i rushed at fsu there were 18 sororities. our rush counselors suggested that we take notes in our booklet about what the house looked like, what they sang, what they wore, who our hostess was, what we talked about, any other members we met, etc. it did come in handy when we had to accept or regret invitations.

[bluefish81]

Originally Posted by irishpipes

Our stages went 22-8-5-3. In my opinion this was ridiculous. I had trouble distinguishing some chapters after first stage, but we had to cut back to 8 so a lot of chapters got cut when I would have loved to have gone back. The “regret with interest” was not available, nor were release figures that prevented chapters from inviting you back when they had no intention of pledging you. I am positive that many rushees confused chapters with similar names simply because the whole process was so huge and overwhelming.

Wow! 22 to 8! That's a huge cut, especially when the first day is generally so insane. I was expecting you to say that it went from 22 to oh, maybe 12 or 14 or so.

Originally Posted by FSUZeta

tsteven, those are good suggestions.

when i rushed at fsu there were 18 sororities. our rush counselors suggested that we take notes in our booklet about what the house looked like, what they sang, what they wore, who our hostess was, what we talked about, any other members we met, etc. it did come in handy when we had to accept or regret invitations.

When I rushed at Iowa State in 1997, I think our booklets had little pictures of the houses in them - which was nice. It also had some general info about the chapter - colors and symbols maybe?

[DeltaBetaBaby]

IP, I picked out about 8 of the chapters from your notes, even though I did not rush until 1999. It's amazing how much stays the same. Maybe I will do mine sometime soon.

As a side note, my rush was 19 >> 10 >> 5 >> 3, so they didn't make you cut down quite as many from round 1 to round 2. We actually had 22 parties in round 1, but only 19 were NPC. The others were associate members of our CPH, and 4-H, which has full standing in the CPH.

[irishpipes]

Originally Posted by DeltaBetaBaby

IP, I picked out about 8 of the chapters from your notes, even though I did not rush until 1999. It's amazing how much stays the same. Maybe I will do mine sometime soon.

As a side note, my rush was 19 >> 10 >> 5 >> 3, so they didn't make you cut down quite as many from round 1 to round 2. We actually had 22 parties in round 1, but only 19 were NPC. The others were associate members of our CPH, and 4-H, which has full standing in the CPH.

For my rush, Phi Beta Chi and 4-H did a presentation at the orientation, but did not participate in rush even though they were housed sororities and members of panhellenic. To be eligible for 4-H you had to have 4 or 5 years of 4-H under your belt so I guess they didn't want to make everyone go there when so few would be eligible. Phi Beta Chi was a Christian group, I believe.

[amycat412]

Originally Posted by TSteven

I can well image that it would be confusing.

Do you think it would it have been helpful to have some sort of visual aid in the room when ranking? Perhaps pictures of each house and the corresponding letters/abbreviations? It seems like it might be easier to link the chapter (members) to the physical house (the blue one with the orange trim) than just to letters (abbreviations).

The rush booklets USC sent out the summer before my freshman year in 1987 had a page with a pic of the house, both greek letter and nicknames, and colors, mascots, etc-- blank page on the other side for notes. It made it MUCH easier to decipher things.