Into the Woods - I journey into the forrest to find my sisters

[KSUViolet06]

Originally Posted by carnation

I'm happy that you got your first choice! Did your neighbor ever pledge?

My rush roommate plus another cheerleader went to 2 pref parties each and neither got a bid.

The 70s seem like such strange times in a recruitment sense (assuming you went through recruitment in the 70s?)

I was just talking to some Miami OH chapter alumnae about how it was for them. There were 25 NPCs on campus (deferred recruitment) and it was a reasonably regular thing for girls to go through, attend 3 prefs and not receive a bid.

...and I thought the pre-RFM early 2000s were bad. Most people DID get bids then, but it was normal to attend a full slate of Philanthropy Round parties (all 6) only to be cut down to 2 for House Tours. Or the most common story: having same strong/high return chapters on your schedule through House Tours, only for them to cut you after that (Pref was next day.) Lots of tears and dropouts back then just out of pure shock because you were under the impression all week that Kappa loved you. (Because they kept inviting you back.) I also heard a lot of "XYZ promised me a bid" back then. Moreso than now. Kappa has no room to fake promise you a bid because they have to cut 65%.

There are lots of RFM gripes but I appreciate that it forces the stronger groups to "rip off the bandaid early" so to speak.

/hijack

[BlueBayou]

Originally Posted by KSUViolet06

The 70s seem like such strange times in a recruitment sense (assuming you went through recruitment in the 70s?)

It was the 80s - but a smaller school without a huge greek system, so it was behaving more like the 70s. We got rush Rho Chi groups before I graduated. They also tried out an "informal" fall rush - where you had to have at least 20 or 24 hours to go through. This was an effort to combat the fact only freshmen were getting pledged.

So things were really in flux.

Once I was on the other side of things - I really appreciated what my sorority did to try to prevent quota victims. Our nationals made us make deep cuts leading up to pref. And whatever the number Panhellenic said you could invite to pref (I don't recall what it was - it may have been double quota) we always invited significantly less than that number.

Our nationals made if clear, having 20 or 30 girls say they were a quota victim of ABC and XYZ did not make the chapters any stronger and it was not a bragging point. Our nationals had something called "Rush Honor Roll.' Where a certain percent of your pledge class came off of your 1st bid list. We made rush honor roll consistently. That meant nationals dictated that your second bid list was not a full bid list. Because if you are only taking 5 people off that list on a regular basis - the other 35-40 would be potential quota victims. I'm sure other groups had similar policies. It's like they were working on a system similar to the computer system of today - but without the technology.

And because we were one of the two chapters with much higher GPA standards than the posted minimum Panhellenic GPA to rush. We made deep cuts round one. It was not uncommon to have a deep first round of cuts only be for grades.