No place for average PNMs?

[APhiAnna]

One situation that may make sense is if her daughter was invited back to all of her top choices in the earliest rounds. Therefore she eliminated the chapters who would have really wanted her, only to maybe make a "flub" or simply fall through the cracks during later rounds causing her to get cut by the chapters she had left, which were much more competitive sororities. I agree that it is extremely rare to get cut by all sororities at many campuses, but this scenario could make it plausible.

To kkgdgmom, I'm sorry if you feel my post was harsh, but I see it as a valid statement. You are doing the very thing that inspired me to write that post: to assume that all the blame for your daughter's recruitment was on the chapters and not on her. In order to grow I think your daughter (if she is even as upset as you are, she may be over it already) should sit down and try to think about what she did and how she can improve that aspect. It can be really hard, and I know it is a painful situation, but a victim mentality is always a hindrance to growth.

[UGAalum94]

Well, the possibility does exist that her daughter didn't do anything wrong, but simply didn't quite make it onto the bid lists at the chapters she went to for third round. Depending on those chapters' return rates, they may not get to pref very many girls. If they assumed she was going to go Kappa, they may have released her in favor of keeping someone they thought had a completely open mind.

We've talked on here before about how it's better sometimes to be cut hard in the early rounds so that you can finish out at the groups that are really interested. It may just be that she fell though the cracks through no real fault of her own.

On the other hand, kkgdgmom, sometimes the rest of the world doesn't see us as quite as amazing as our moms do. Your own evaluation of your daughter's relative strength in the PNM pool may be not be objective. She may not have come across as as interested and sweet as other PNMs. I think every chapter has girls that they liked who they release for one reason or another. As long as they end up with a pledge class they like, it doesn't really mean there's a problem with the whole system. Encourage your daughter to pursue COB if it's available on her campus. Or simply to get involved with other organizations to put her in the best position should she decide to re-rush. Or even just to move on with her life without worrying about being Greek. Life goes on.

[Titchou]

OK...I don't understand how she doesn't know why she was released when she supposedly has a sister in one of the chapters. Surely the sister was given a reason...you just don't release an in house legacy and tell the sister nothing...

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by Titchou

OK...I don't understand how she doesn't know why she was released when she supposedly has a sister in one of the chapters. Surely the sister was given a reason...you just don't release an in house legacy and tell the sister nothing...

I can offer no rational backup for this claim but I think the sitting sister is at a different campus, probably for the reason you mention.

[SWTXBelle]

Not to mention - that "sitting" sister would have voted on her sister, and been there for the voting (unless they send "sitting sisters" out of the room - even so, surely she would have wanted to know what happened)

If you want to be angry, it seems to me your anger is misdirected. No one insulted your daughter, her morals, her qualifications, her fashion sense or suggested she was only " lower tier" material. A careful reading of relevant threads here on GreekChat would show that we HATE the idea of tiers, and only wish more pnms would not think in terms of them. The sequined hose is a bit of an inside joke - search if you are really interested.

Where is the anger towards your other daughter's chapter - the one that cut the sister of a sitting sister? We can't help think that for THAT to happen there is something we are all missing. We've offered possible scenarios that might explain what happened - but you don't seem interested in them, preferring to scapegoat the chapters, or people you don't even know on the internet.

BUT I'm sure I speak for several posters here when I say you've returned the favor and given us a laugh - you've hit just about every helimom cliche', from the "I hope you don't belong to MY sorority" (and if it makes you feel any better, I hope you aren't in mine!) to "ladies - and I'm using the term loosely" type insults directed to us all, even those who have only tried to offer comfort and a possible explaination.

I hope for your daughter's sake she doesn't share in your bitterness. It's not attractive.

[tootiepie]

Although there are those girls out there who do all the thing the APhiAnna wrote about I think it is really hard for some girls to really show their personalities in the atmosphere of recruitment. Of course I think my daughter is fantastic and any sorority would have been lucky to have her. She was special in her small class of 46 but not so outstanding when you have 800 other girls to compete against!! Added to the fact that she is a very reserved girl she really struggled to let her personality show during rush. Her friends who had more outgoing personalites had no problems at all. She was very lucky and got a bid to a sorority that she loved but she is still struggling with getting to know the girls and feeling comfortable with them.

I think for most girls it probably the same, I don't think most girls that get cut heavy are just crazy party animals who have slept with half the guys on campus ( at least I hope not) I think they are probably just nice average girls like my daughter. The sad part is that I think that these girls are probably the ones that turn out to be the best sorority members. The ones that like to be the center of attention are sometimes all flash and no substance.

[APhiAnna]

Originally Posted by tootiepie

Although there are those girls out there who do all the thing the APhiAnna wrote about I think it is really hard for some girls to really show their personalities in the atmosphere of recruitment. Of course I think my daughter is fantastic and any sorority would have been lucky to have her. She was special in her small class of 46 but not so outstanding when you have 800 other girls to compete against!! Added to the fact that she is a very reserved girl she really struggled to let her personality show during rush. Her friends who had more outgoing personalites had no problems at all. She was very lucky and got a bid to a sorority that she loved but she is still struggling with getting to know the girls and feeling comfortable with them.

I think for most girls it probably the same, I don't think most girls that get cut heavy are just crazy party animals who have slept with half the guys on campus ( at least I hope not) I think they are probably just nice average girls like my daughter. The sad part is that I think that these girls are probably the ones that turn out to be the best sorority members. The ones that like to be the center of attention are sometimes all flash and no substance.

Oh, I absolutely agree. One of the things on my list was being shy, which I think is the far more likely case than any of the "slut/stuck-up/crazy story" scenarios. The problem with being shy is that it rarely makes the person disliked by sisters, but it rarely makes them memorable, and sometimes if they aren't memorable they can easily fall through the cracks.

I think the majority of girls who have bad rushes are probably shy or reserved, which is why they usually shine through COB.

Most of the "extreme" items on that list, IMHO, occur rarely. But when a mother comes on and says, "my daughter is the most outgoing person in the world, modeled for Victoria's Secret, found a cure for the common cold and spent a year living in Tibet helping the poor and got dropped by all chapters" you have to wonder. Maybe she is not as outgoing or stunning looking as the mother believes, but if she is then she probably did something very extreme to not get invited back to ALL (!) of the chapters.

I can totally see a shy girl falling through the cracks even though she is a great person. But I have a hard time believing that somebody who reportedly has such a great personality, stunning looks, great grades and extracurriculars, etc. can truly "fall through the cracks"...if all the claims are true then there is usually something else to the story.

[KSUViolet06]

Originally Posted by APhiAnna

The problem with being shy is that it rarely makes the person disliked by sisters, but it rarely makes them memorable, and sometimes if they aren't memorable they can easily fall through the cracks.

This.

I also think parents need to realize that their daughter may very well be AWESOME on paper with great grades, tons of activities, etc. She also may be very well put together and model gorgeous.

But at the end of the day as a mom, you were NOT THERE during recruitment to see and hear her interacting with the sororities and do not know how she presented herself conversation/personality-wise during the parties. You just don't.

She didn't have to necessarily be rude anything, but it's possible that in a recruitment full of very accomplished and great women who were interesting and fun to talk to, she was just not memorable.

When you have 700 or 800 PNMs and need to make cuts, something as simple as members just NOT remembering you can mean the difference between invite and no invite.

Originally Posted by APhiAnna

Oh, I absolutely agree. One of the things on my list was being shy, which I think is the far more likely case than any of the "slut/stuck-up/crazy story" scenarios. The problem with being shy is that it rarely makes the person disliked by sisters, but it rarely makes them memorable, and sometimes if they aren't memorable they can easily fall through the cracks.

I think the majority of girls who have bad rushes are probably shy or reserved, which is why they usually shine through COB.

Most of the "extreme" items on that list, IMHO, occur rarely. But when a mother comes on and says, "my daughter is the most outgoing person in the world, modeled for Victoria's Secret, found a cure for the common cold and spent a year living in Tibet helping the poor and got dropped by all chapters" you have to wonder. Maybe she is not as outgoing or stunning looking as the mother believes, but if she is then she probably did something very extreme to not get invited back to ALL (!) of the chapters.

I can totally see a shy girl falling through the cracks even though she is a great person. But I have a hard time believing that somebody who reportedly has such a great personality, stunning looks, great grades and extracurriculars, etc. can truly "fall through the cracks"...if all the claims are true then there is usually something else to the story.

I wasn't going to get back on and add anything additional to this but what the heck. I know it sounds far fetched. But my daughter is everything that I presented in previous posts and more. You can actually google more than 6 pages of her accomplishments (I am not making this up), and yes her sitting sister is at another college in the same state, not only did she receive a ride to the school where she is currently a freshman, but she received several monetary humanitarian awards that she donated back to the organizations that she volunteers for... She was voted both most likely to succeed and the friendliest by her senior class. I guess the only thing that she has against her is' that she is somewhat shy when in a new situation (but what person isn't), she was a varsity cheerleader all through high school, but opted not to try out in college. So although many of you posters keept trying to find something wrong with her, there wasn't anything really glaring or another story out there. I just wanted to point these facts out. I know she would have made a contribution to any Sorority on her campus. I have to stop reading these replies though, I have better things to do with my time

[RhoGamma09]

Originally Posted by kkgdgmom

I wasn't going to get back on and add anything additional to this but what the heck. I know it sounds far fetched. But my daughter is everything that I presented in previous posts and more. You can actually google more than 6 pages of her accomplishments (I am not making this up), and yes her sitting sister is at another college in the same state, not only did she receive a ride to the school where she is currently a freshman, but she received several monetary humanitarian awards that she donated back to the organizations that she volunteers for... She was voted both most likely to succeed and the friendliest by her senior class. I guess the only thing that she has against her is' that she is somewhat shy when in a new situation (but what person isn't), she was a varsity cheerleader all through high school, but opted not to try out in college. So although many of you posters keept trying to find something wrong with her, there wasn't anything really glaring or another story out there. I just wanted to point these facts out. I know she would have made a contribution to any Sorority on her campus. I have to stop reading these replies though, I have better things to do with my time

I'm probably preaching to the choir here because you said youre not coming back, but for what its worth,

look, I am sure youre daughter IS wonderful. But lets look at a couple things here:

You might be wonderful too, but in some of your posts, you came off as pretty snippy....probably why we seemed so harsh in return. I bet $10 you didnt mean to be snippy at all (except for when you were going on about how you hope we're not in your sorority and how youre out of out league)
But guess what? Wires get crossed. Things come across the wrong way. When youre an awesome person and you have an accomplishment list a mile long, you immediately become intimidating, and learning how to deal with being awesome AND not scaring people at the same time is hard, and probably something that will take your daughter all of college to learn how to deal with.

And shyness. She is probably some sweet, shy, wonderful person, but during recruitment, whatever your weakness is comes out tenfold because of all the pressure, so her shyness mightve gotten the best of her, but maybe to the girls, this exceedingly gorgeous legacy/awesome girl might not seem shy, but aloof.

And lastly, this could be a possibility, I had a best friend who is a model, she is ridiculously tall and model like, she has all the right features, bright, intelligent, an excellent actress, and friendly, but she was a little shy when meeting people, and guess what? People were downright scared of her. Models, when placed next to normal everyday people, sometimes look otherwordly compared to everyone else, and to top it off, she was shy so they all thought that she was just an aloof b....talk about being misunderstood. Shes in college now at a huge Greek school, and she never got into a house either.

Your daughter can learn a valuable lesson from this, she has everything on paper, but she can learn how to take her experience and figure out how she can master making a great impression in 60 seconds. It takes being relaxed, friendly, outgoing, humble, but still letting all that awesomeness and charisma shine through.

Its three years after I went through and I STILL think about it down to the minute of my recruitment and try to figure out just WHAT I was like under all that pressure in a uncomfortable/unfamiliar situation. I was a lot different than I normally am (except for with one house....which, of course, is my house now, and the rest is history ) What I am saying is, I learned SO much from that one weekend, and it taught me an extremely valuable lesson that has helped me all through college.

[33girl]

Originally Posted by kkgdgmom

she received several monetary humanitarian awards that she donated back to the organizations that she volunteers for...

If she's such a flipping humanitarian, she should have joined one of the lower tier (your words not ours, cowgirl) chapters and invited all her fellow Elite models to come in and turn it around. (Wait, this was a movie, wasn't it?)

[oncegreek]

Okay, some one please post the link to the infamous rush thread from a year or two ago......I am too much of a luddite to know how to do this...the uh, train wreck thread with the PNM and her twin sister. That is what my comments about that "one thing" and the famous rhinestone pantyhose were referring to. Kkgdg mom, I am sorry about your daughter's experience, and I hope she finds a sorority home.

[Psi U MC Vito]

Originally Posted by oncegreek

Okay, some one please post the link to the infamous rush thread from a year or two ago......I am too much of a luddite to know how to do this...the uh, train wreck thread with the PNM and her twin sister. That is what my comments about that "one thing" and the famous rhinestone pantyhose were referring to. Kkgdg mom, I am sorry about your daughter's experience, and I hope she finds a sorority home.

http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/sh...ighlight=aspen

Ask and you shall receive.

[tootiepie]

APhiAnna I think I got so distracted by all the craziness that I forgot all your points!!!! Just like an 18 year old I only remembered the most outrageous ones!!

[angels&angles]

It's also worth noting -- it may have been said again, but worth repeating -- SOMETIMES shy can look like bored/rude. I've had PNMs drive me up the wall, because they're not giving me ANY feedback whatsoever. I talk about philanthropy, they nod. I talk about social, they nod. I talk about academics, they nod. I ask about them, they give one word answers.

Alot of times, I could tell the difference between the bored/rude ones and the really shy ones... but someone giving me that little to go on just isn't attractive. I usually wouldn't advocate dropping someone like that unless we loved everyone else in the round... but sometimes it comes down to that.

PNMs -- even if you're shy, at least try and seem interested and engaged! That could be even the small tip of the balance to get you invited back.