University of Illinois/Urbana-Champaign Recruitment

[DeltaBetaBaby]

Originally Posted by DG Illinois

Snap bid update -
I don't even know how this happened but the snap bid I told you about yesterday gets even crazier.

That particular house extended 14 snap bids to girls who went to their 3rd party but was cut before pref night to make quota.
It's not that much of a secret anymore because a lot of people are talking about it and I guess some of the houses are saying RFM is not fair because they are forced to cut so drastically that this one house was 14 under quota.

There were a few others, but this was the big one

Do you know what quota was?

I can think of many reasons this would happen. The first, and most obvious, is that they had a weaker year of recruitment than years past. Combined with that, they may have mis-read the interest of a lot of women, and/or not turned in flex lists as recommended.

Another possibility is that they were competing primarily with one or two other houses, and those houses rushed dirty.

Yet a third possibility is that the RFM specialists did not accurately predict the impact of losing a chapter. While this seems less likely to me, given that this chapter was rarely in competition with Phi Mu, there could have been issues nonetheless.

Also, the fact that there were 14 women even AVAILABLE for snap bids seems a bit strange. That means there was an awful lot of suiciding going on. Alternatively, there may have been a lot of drop-outs prior to pref.

In any case, I understand why they'd be upset, but it certainly doesn't mean that RFM is a bad thing.

[FSUZeta]

Combined with that, they may have mis-read the interest of a lot of women, and/or not turned in flex lists as recommended.

Another possibility is that they were competing primarily with one or two other houses.

my money's on these two possibilities. Is RFM fairly new to this campus?

[DeltaBetaBaby]

Originally Posted by FSUZeta

Combined with that, they may have mis-read the interest of a lot of women, and/or not turned in flex lists as recommended.

Another possibility is that they were competing primarily with one or two other houses.

my money's on these two possibilities. Is RFM fairly new to this campus?

This is either the fifth or sixth year it's been used.

[DubaiSis]

I think they might be cutting a little too aggressively, especially in the early rounds of rush. I really like the inherent fairness in cutting girls you don't intend to pledge right from the get-go, but there are a LOT of girls who are maybes who could be given another chance. I don't know how many that means need to attend prefs, but maybe a few more? If they allowed every chapter to invite 10 more girls to each round of parties, how much impact would it make? Maybe not a lot or maybe it would be really hard on the smallest chapter, but at Illinois, I don't think there currently IS a smallest chapter. Haven't they pretty much achieved parity now? Alpha Xi, the former new kid on the block is perfectly solid, and I don't think any chapters are in jeopardy.

Of course, I'm not there and the numbers in print can look a lot different with girls crying on bid day.

I'm just glad this chapter that went afoul of RFM was able to recoup without any huge issues. Did it happen to any others?

And no, RFM isn't new to Illinois. I'm wondering if the RFM gurus out there are thinking there's a magic and exact number to shoot for and they're just pressing too hard. Maybe this year they found where the break point is. I really wish I could see RFM in action from the back room!

[DG Illinois]

Quota was 53.
I didn't mean for it to sound negative, but for one house to get 40 girls while others are getting in the high 60's and 80's. that is almost double the difference.
There were snap bids for a few other houses as well. I heard right around 20 total snap bids that they were rushing to put together in the morning before bid day.

[DeltaBetaBaby]

Originally Posted by DG Illinois

Quota was 53.
I didn't mean for it to sound negative, but for one house to get 40 girls while others are getting in the high 60's and 80's. that is almost double the difference.
There were snap bids for a few other houses as well. I heard right around 20 total snap bids that they were rushing to put together in the morning before bid day.

Well, I have a lot of opinions on things that are wrong at UIUC rush, but I won't air them all here. I will say that the rho chi training leaves a lot to be desired, and I think that can have a much bigger impact than people realize.

[KDCat]

Originally Posted by DG Illinois

Quota was 53.
I didn't mean for it to sound negative, but for one house to get 40 girls while others are getting in the high 60's and 80's. that is almost double the difference.
There were snap bids for a few other houses as well. I heard right around 20 total snap bids that they were rushing to put together in the morning before bid day.

Something went wrong, or a ton of girls suicided. There are statistics at the Dean's office. In past years, nearly every chapter filled its quota through computer matching. It will be interesting to see what this year's numbers look.

Here's the recruitment numbers:
http://www.odos.uiuc.edu/greek/membe...lenicStats.asp

And here's the grade reports for spring 2011, which list the number of members for each house:
http://www.odos.uiuc.edu/greek/schol.../panGrades.asp

[LaneSig]

Originally Posted by KDCat

Something went wrong, or a ton of girls suicided. There are statistics at the Dean's office. In past years, nearly every chapter filled its quota through computer matching. It will be interesting to see what this year's numbers look.

http://www.odos.uiuc.edu/greek/membe...lenicStats.asp

Someone needs to check their math. I was looking at the Stats (I'm a Stat addict), the averages are way off if they are just using the last 5 years.

[KDCat]

Originally Posted by LaneSig

Someone needs to check their math. I was looking at the Stats (I'm a Stat addict), the averages are way off if they are just using the last 5 years.

Yeah. Not really sure how they got 90 for the average number of people who withdraw after open house, or 49 for the number of withdrawals after 1st invitational, when the number of withdrawals for every year are lower than that.

[ComradesTrue]

Originally Posted by KDCat

And here's the grade reports for spring 2011, which list the number of members for each house:
http://www.odos.uiuc.edu/greek/schol.../panGrades.asp

Interesting chapter numbers. THere are three groups that COB'd classes of 40+ in the spring. One of those groups wound up with total of 175, which is one of the highest totals on the list. What is official chapter total?

[irishpipes]

Originally Posted by Blondie93

What is official chapter total?

170

[ComradesTrue]

Originally Posted by irishpipes

170

Interesting. There are 5 groups that took new members in the spring and their total members exceeds 170, according to the grade list. Am I missing something?

I am still amazed at 3 groups basically taking a second formal recruitment-sized class in the spring. Good for them, I just have not heard of COB classes being that large before.

[DeltaBetaBaby]

Originally Posted by Blondie93

Interesting chapter numbers. THere are three groups that COB'd classes of 40+ in the spring. One of those groups wound up with total of 175, which is one of the highest totals on the list. What is official chapter total?

No, the grade reports are messed up, in which groups had NM's in the spring. Those are definitely the fall classes for Gamma Phi Beta, AEPhi and Alpha Phi.

A few chapters look like they COB'ed above total, but I think this has something to do with rules on what happens to women who are student teaching or something like that. I don't remember, exactly, but I think there are women who show up on grade reports who don't count in total. Either that, or they issued bids above total and nobody did anything about it.

[DG Illinois]

I think I heard it was implemented in 2005.
If it were my house I would be be concerned and I do feel bad that something happened where 14 new pledges never got to experience pref night etc. The system worked incredibly well for a lot of the houses,
with a lot of houses exceeding quota dramatically.
But I knew a lot of girls that loved this house and lost it and the part I'm most worried about is that more girls may suicide now which is the wrong message.
I'm not sure if all of them suicided either, some of them may of dropped out.

[DubaiSis]

I'm assuming they've been keeping track of these figures since before 2006. For RFM to work, didn't they start tracking the numbers (and running RFM parrallel to hand matching) 2 or 3 years before they did away with the old system?