Effects of the New Release Figures

[honeychile]

Originally Posted by Alphagamuga

The newest recruitment page at UGA tells women that recommendations are not required for any group, too. It's almost as if PNMs are sabotaged at every turn by the official advice. Sure, it is officially the responsibility of the group to get you one if the group needs it, but I don't think it's a good idea for the girls to count on that on a highly competitive campus.

I think starkly realistic information from all sources would help young women through the process more than the consistently optimistic stuff they get instead.

Agreed - statements such as these don't allow those who don't really know the system even the smallest of chances!

[alum]

Originally Posted by 33girl

Just tell them that the more popular a group is, the more women they will have to cut - even if they're great women. I would compare it to college admissions. They've all been through that and know to have "safety" schools and not just apply to Harvard. If they did that, they would be sitting around at the end of their senior year with no clue where they're going or having to settle for a school they never thought they would end up at.

I agree with 33girl. All college applicants are told to have reaches, matches and safeties on their college lists. There are college admissions forums in which kids post their stats for their chances at various schools. Colleges have developed set formulae as to how they choose their students. Some schools focus on grades more than SATs. Some weight EC involvement more than other colleges. Of course the legacy/major donor factor comes into play for college admissions as well.

A difference is that adcoms for schools are composed of adults, not fellow students. We don't have alumnae choosing the new sisters, we have the actives themselves. Obviously adults and alums have more life experience than the collegians/actives and would perhaps look beyond a nervous PNM's poise and focus on her resume.

[FSUZeta]

33girl said it best. tell the pnms the facts. after all, that is all you can do.

if pnms then choose to think that they know more about it than you, and they drop all but the "top" groups and then in turn, get dropped by the top groups, you shouldn't feel that you let them down.

i see the new release figures(nfr) as a positive thing. the problem with the new release figures is that it works better in theory. the nrf was instituted to keep pnms in recruitiment and give the smaller chapters a better chance to grow.

the problem is there is a choice. we know that panhellenic is going to make sure that the chapters comply with the required drops. the chapters still get to choose which pnms they invite back, they are just inviting a smaller percentage than the other chapters. the majority of the pnms want them and most of their invitations will be accepted, so the nrf has little effect on the top chapters final results.

where this breaks down is with the pnms. some pnms just can't accept the fact that the top groups did not invite them back and they drop out. had they continued on with the invitations they did receive, they may have found a chapter where they could be happy. perhaps if they were required to stay in recruitment until "x" party or until they did not receive any invitations at all, the nrfs might truly work as was intended.

[UGAalum94]

Are the we just noticing the dropouts more now than we used to? Because the ones who do the big cuts surely would have released before prefs the girls who today get released after first or second round, right? What used to keep the girls from dropping out whenever they got their realistic options in the past? Do the drops look worse because they occur earlier in the process?

It does seem to be helping the smaller chapters, but maybe it's not only in the way people thought it would. In addition to getting girls to look at smaller chapters when the big ones drop them, it also means that a girl who is still around for prefs is pretty serious about accepting a bid from the groups she's got left.

[33girl]

Originally Posted by Alphagamuga

Are the we just noticing the dropouts more now than we used to? Because the ones who do the big cuts surely would have released before prefs the girls who today get released after first or second round, right? What used to keep the girls from dropping out whenever they got their realistic options in the past? Do the drops look worse because they occur earlier in the process?

It does seem to be helping the smaller chapters, but maybe it's not only in the way people thought it would. In addition to getting girls to look at smaller chapters when the big ones drop them, it also means that a girl who is still around for prefs is pretty serious about accepting a bid from the groups she's got left.

Some DIDN'T release before prefs girls they really had no intention of bidding - they were still "padding" their parties, even then. That was part of the problem. It probably does seem worse when you're dropped earlier - "they hardly got to know me! How can they cut me!"

Then again, maybe cutting you AFTER they get to know you is worse, LOL. It all depends how you look at it.

[carnation]

Back in the day, there were few to no release rules and some groups would keep as many girls around as possible for "eye candy", then do massive cuts before prefs--where there were usually required numbers. For instance, some schools required that your pref party numbers be no more than 1 1/2 to 2 times the numbers of bids that could be handed out. This was also aided by the fact that at many schools, quota was determined early on; they might take the number of girls still in after first parties and divide it by the number of sororities. Both of these led to the big groups staying big and the smaller ones staying smaller-or folding.

I think we hear more about the cuts from selective schools like UGa because you have to be so outstanding to get in now. Certainly no freshmen are cut for grades and I have no idea how the heck the sororities are able to manage the giant cuts. Anyway, the women who are rushing have been rejected very little in their lives; they've accomplished so much and when these outstanding women get cut by 75% of the sororities after second parties, many, many drop out. Unless someone personally knows some of the outstanding PNMs who get cut (like, say, the women whom NUBlue&Blue knew last fall) they can not begin to imagine how fabulous these "recruitment dropouts" are.

[UGAalum94]

Oh, I agree. I think I've mentioned before how more girls I know dropped out last year than pledged, and they were all excellent girls. They also knew enough about the process that they were seeking out recs and knew to provide information about activities, etc.

I don't think they would have been more likely to get bids from the A1 chapters in the past, but they would have pledged someplace, and I wonder what makes the difference.

Can anyone speak about an increase in snap bids? I heard they had increased too. Is that accurate?

[carnation]

At UGa, I really think that the increase in dropouts is due to the shock of the early, heavy cuts. Once on here, I posted about how one of my daughters was sitting in front of a freshman dorm during rush a couple of years ago and several buses drove up and unloaded dozens of sobbing women. Her friend asked one of them what was going on and she said that everyone on those buses had just dropped out of recruitment because they were cut so heavily.This was after second parties.

In the last few years, we've frequently heard about many of the big houses having to extend some snap bids. It's probably hard to figure out how the PNMs are ranking you.

[UGAalum94]

And the dropping out probably gains momentum as more people see other people doing it.

I can think of one of the girls I followed, and she and her roommate both dropped out.

In her case, though, she explained that for greek life to be worth it, it was one of her top chapters from the first day or nothing at all. Ah, the eighteen year old mind, you gotta love it.

But at least it means that the girls who come back for third round and pref are serious about at least one group they have left. I bet there aren't too many girls who go through pref and then don't sign a bid card.

[FSUZeta]

i believe it was said in another thread, that in the atlanta metro area(and i am sure other areas also) that it is a status thing to be in certain sororities at uga. maybe going home with an "xyz" shirt instead of an "abc" shirt would be akin to not pledging at all in these circles.

i wonder if these women who are dropping out at the getgo are being dropped by all the top chapters and the pnms figure that if they cannot be in one of the top 3 or 6 or 8 sororities on campus, then they just won't pledge.
i have visited many of the uga sororities websites and they all look good to me-of course i do not know which ones are supposed to be more prestigious than the others, so i am looking at them unbiased.

i agree with carnation that the nrfs seem to be doing a number on legacies. maybe it hits them particularly hard because most sororities as a courtesy will invite a legacy of that sorority back to the first invitational round-if the majority of the other sororities have already dropped her for fear that she will pledge her legacy house, and then she is not invited back to the legacy sorority for the 2nd invitational round, she is left with little to no choice.

it becomes all the more important who the sororities invite back when they have to cut 50-75-90% of the pnms after the first set of parties. they cannot take a chance that a legacy is coming into recruitment with an open mind.

wouldn't it be nice if pnms came in not having already heard the "tent talk" during their high school years and were completely ignorant as to supposed prestige of each chapter? and wouldn't it be great if the pnms took a good long look at themselves and realized that they just might fit in better and stand a better chance in a 2nd tier or bottom tier chapter? when i rushed at fl. state, i knew girls in several sororities, but i did not know any of the sororities reputations-panhellenic relatives had spared me that. i look back now and realize that i declined invitations to many of the top tier(at the time) chapters. i still managed to find the right fit for myself and had a full compliment of parties each day-of course this was waaaaaay before nrfs.

[UGAalum94]

I apologize for seeming so skeptical, but can anybody really say for sure that any groups have to release 75 to 90% of the women after first round? Really?

That would mean that they went from 1200 to 300 or even 120 girls for 12 party second round.

Think about how weird it would be to have 10 to 25 pnms per party visiting a 200 girl chapter. I know that one of the Rho Chis tried to tell me that it was really true, but I tend to take what Rho Chis tell me with a grain of salt because the official word and reality don't always match up. (I also don't know how privy they really are to the groups' party lists and release numbers; not at all I'd guess.)

I thought that release figures always allowed a group to invite anticipated quota times the number of events back, even for the groups near perfect return rates, so cutting 75-90% doesn't add up with that.

Is anyone willing to either post or pm me the number that you chapter really had to cut after first and second round?

FSUZeta, I'm a skeptic by nature and I apologize that it seems like I doubt what you are telling me. I just don't understand how it's possible.

[UGAalum94]

If we said quota was likely to be 55 and you had 12 parties second round, a A1 group would likely have to cut half the PNMs or so, which is plenty harsh enough. And they'd do about half again after second which would be severe again, and a group would be done to around 25% of the total girls who started rush by the start of third party.

I can see why the groups are looking for any reason, like legacy status, to release a girl who they think might not want them. Not that it's right, but it would be so hard to decide to invite back.

[FSUZeta]

no need to apologize. no offense was taken !

i did not mean for anyone to take literally the figures i threw out there. i was just using them as a possible scenario. sorry for the confusion.

i would imagine that the groups that had to cut the highest number of pnms would have the same or at least close to the same amount of pnms at their parties. they would probably just have fewer parties than the groups who were allowed to extend as many invitations as they wanted.

i don't know exact figures that i can quote-i always hear the outcome of recruitment at fsu, but i do not get hard numbers(except how much quota was). the panhellenic system at fgcu(where i am an advisor) is new enough that they are not yet having to comply with the release figure component. i think that they will be ready to use it in a few years.

[UGAalum94]

Thank you, FSUZeta; I'm glad you understood.

Does anyone know if at UGA the number of parties per group varies?

I also am feeling bad about saying that I didn't believe the rho chi about release figures. I suppose she could have been an expert because she attended the parties as the girls made the rounds.

Can anyone verify if all the school who do release figures allow all the groups to invite quota times the number of parties back each round?

Do the number of parties vary by group at UGA?

[XOMOM]

Both of my daughters did that, and I was the one who asked them that question. But things are very different now, than way back when i went through rush. Although they were direct legacies, I wanted them to make their own choices for themselves. They are so happy with their choice.