Day 5: Preference + Bid Night
Today she was invited back to her two favorite houses,
Giada de Laurentiis and
Alex Guarnaschelli!
Her first house of the day was
Giada de Laurentiis. Instead of lining up and walking in, actives come out one by one and say a little bit about the PNM they are preffing before taking them into the house. The active who came out to take in my sister was my little!

Apparently my little had been hiding this from me all week when I asked her if she had seen my sister yet. My sister also got to meet my grand-little and they all talked about really random topics the entire party. My sister said it wasn't like a recruitment conversation and instead just like hanging with her friends that she's known for a long time. Later she was escorted into a room for the more serious part of preference. My sister cried during one of the songs that is from her favorite musical. She left the party really feeling at home.
Her second party was
Alex Guarnaschelli. She said that the ceremony was beautiful and that she had enjoyed meeting all the girls from this house. But she felt like they were trying too hard to get her to love the house today instead of how natural it had felt at the previous house.
Her final rankings were:
1. Giada de Laurentiis
2. Alex Guarnaschelli
She called me after saying how nervous she was and that she was going to be so sad if she didn't get her first choice. I knew my particular chapter's legacy policy and didn't want to spoil it for her so I just told her that she had loved BOTH these chapters at some point this week and would be happy at either one. She had to wait a grueling 8 hours or so until she got her bid.
That night she opened up her bid to...
Giada de Laurentiis
AKA
ALPHA DELTA PI at UCLA!
If anyone has read my own recruitment story (Sporty Transfer Recruitment) from before, I can provide a few updates. It's funny how my sister didn't click at all with anything sports related and that's what I based my own recruitment story after! The girl I had on day 1 and who gave me a house tour at Anaheim Ducks later became my big. In my story, I was sad that my house was the only one to have not done a skit like all the others. This year was the very first year they've done a skit in a long time and everyone seems to have really liked it! (Based off of my sister and the other UCLA recruitment story here.)
Bid night has become more "no frills". Before we'd take the new alphas on buses to Hollywood or Universal Citywalk. Now bid day takes place in the chapter houses.
In terms of chapter size, total when I went through was 115 and now ADPi's chapter size is 198!

Only the alphas and some actives can fit in the dining room and chapter meetings have recently been moved to a large classroom on campus. I'm sure that Alpha Gamma Delta's colony and Alpha Xi Delta coming in 2016 will be super successful and help tame chapter sizes down to a more manageable size.
Thanks for reading!