I come from the same type of chapter, as well. We are usually in the top 3 in scholarship (#1 last year!
), we won the greek spirit award and the award for most improved chapter, and we're always in the top 2 or 3 in intramurals.
I think that CarolinaDG made an excellent point about quality over quantity. One thing that we changed while I was in college was that we stopped doing things that made us look desperate. For example, we started to cut more people than we had in the past so that we looked more selective and not like we were inviting back everyone so that we could have higher numbers at the next round of parties (yes, recruitment guests really do notice if everyone is invited back).
I have another question for members of small chapters. I came from a small chapter at a small school (about 2000-2500 students) and one of the biggest problems that we face is reputation and rumors. This is compounded by the fact that we have sophomore recruitment, and the women have a full year to make up their minds about the chapters. We do everything we can to extoll our virtues, like leadership and awards, but no one wants to join a chapter that everyone thinks is struggling. Also, because we're so small, many recruitment guests have not had contact with us to know what type of people we are (I got some really crazy questions/comments ranging from "I heard that all of you have boyfriends, and I don't. Does that make a difference?" to "I heard that you guys do nothing but study.") What kinds of things do you tell recruitment guests that have a preconceived opinion about your chapter?
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