“Did the councils ever integrate with the other councils for campus functions, like greek week, or did the councils function entirely separate from the others.”
In my day, the systems were pretty much completely separate, and I knew nothing about how the black fraternities / sororities operated, other than seeing their letters (and hearing the rumors of the branding that occurred among the guys).
I know, for example, that my S’s house and a sorority typically partner for dance marathon (which is a huge deal on the campus) and this year they double-partnered with the other sororty and the Asian-interest sorority as an attempt to bridge across councils. Though that could just be known as a smooth move to double the number of girls
My understanding even under RFM is that you are guaranteed a bid if you go to the maximum number of preference parties. Now, if you (rushee) drop a lot of the houses in the lower rounds (in Pizzagirl’s example, say you only want to attend 6 parties and not 8 in Round 2, and you were invited back to all 12), you might lose the guarantee, but I’m not sure if you do if, by preference, you still have 3 houses to go to. Yes, someone could get dropped by all 12 houses after the first party, but that’s really unlikely as at big schools many of the houses that haven’t been taking quota invite everyone back (not for preference). It’s the rushee’s option to attend the maximum number of parties allowed or just drop some. It’s not a perfect system but the numbers of girls staying in rush through preference is up so it is working.
Post #234, the Rushees names are on the bid sheets, they are just on the second bid list. Say quota is 50. The house lists 50 on the first bid sheet and then lists the others on a second sheet in the order they’d list them to pledge. These are all the girls who were invited and attended preference. As someone on the first list selects another house, the next name on the second bid sheet moves up and is now #50. No one is going to remember who was on what sheet, or if someone was #51 or #56 - there are just way too many names (and in my day they were all named Kathy/Cathie/Cathy - we had 10 in our house of 50).
Moreover, it’s not as though the entire house ever sees that sheet in the first place. For us, the only ones who saw it were rush director / assistant rush director. No one is sitting there memorizing the exact order of these girls. It’s a freaking spreadsheet, not a poster in the living room for everyone to examine and memorize and when Betty Lou gets in, gripe that Betty Lou was #41 on your list.
What differences do you see? My only knowledge of Wellesley is from alum friends and the networking they take advantage of really does seem like sorority to me. I feel like there is a really strong loyalty to the group from these women, a real sense of identification with their own class and also those older or younger. For a couple it seems an important part of their identify, even though their PhDs are from elsewhere.
adding: I am gathering some of you see cliques as special interests groups but not necessarily exclusionary. As described, my sorority had special interests groups, but I would like to think we all respected each others’ interests and were happy to add someone to the smaller group if they wanted to explore the interest. I kind of floated among groups since I have no real sense of self and was welcomed. There was a kindness to someone who really didn’t fit. ymmv
Our house was maybe 120-130 members of whom about 45-50 lived in (junior class, plus senior officers and then other seniors / sophomores as space permitted). There were certainly cliques within, but I don’t mean exclusionary or mean to one another - just that not all 120 people were equally friends with one another, and little sub-groups formed. I had my “group” but I, like you, floated among several of the groups. We are now all friends on Facebook and the like and realize how silly it all was!
@twoinanddone RFM doesn’t 100% guarantee a bid to girls who maximize every round, but all but does so (current bid rate is 94%). It’s definitely better than “the old days!”
Your reply to @Newsie2015 is spot on. In order to get a regular bid from one of her three preferences, a PNM would have to have been on one of their bid lists. And if she attends preference, a PNM must be placed on a bid list. In many NPC groups, a legacy invited to preference must appear on the first bid list. Not to be confusing, but there may also be snap bidding or COB, which, if allowed, is open to houses that did not make quota and PNMs that did not maximize their invitations and/or match (assuming ceiling has not been met).
@Pizzagirl is correct as usual. Bid lists are seen only by trained adult alum advisers, Panhelllenic staff and perhaps the chapter rush chair and/or president.
No PNM ever knows where she is ranked, and in theory, nor should any sorority member.
I would feel SO much better about my daughter going through rush under RFM than the way we did it. It was developed by an MIT grad who is a sorority alum and is based on mathematical statistics particular to the number of PNMs at each campus, specific chapter retention rates, and to that specific recruitment period.
I was reading up on RFM. For those mothers who were in sororities yourselves, and whose daughters also pledged, do you have an opinion on RFM versus whatever method your sorority used when you were in college? It looks to me like RFM is a way for popular sororities to cut potential new members sooner, so that the PNMs will have a chance to learn about other sororities that will bid them. Seems better for the PNMs, on the theory that if they’re just not into you, you need to start looking elsewhere as soon as possible. No sense in getting your heart set on the Harvard of sororities when Harvard won’t take you, but the Boston College of sororities would be happy to have you.
I don’t see the difference between this RFM and the system we used. But perhaps I’m not clear on the details.
But there was never any incentive for the popular houses to string along a girl they didn’t want in the first place. I just am not seeing a difference.
I know when I started reading up on it from the information the school sent out, it made me feel much better that the goal was to place as many girls as possible. The problem isn’t just coming from the sorority, it’s coming from the girls going through as well if they aren’t open minded about every house and giving every group a chance.
For those who don’t know the scoop at big sec schools. Something like 1200+ girls will want to join 15+ houses. So theoretically you need to know going in… sorority of my dreams abc will only take 80 girls out of 1200. My odds of that are super slim UNLESS I already have contacts within that house and have a good, clean reputation, high grades, high test scores, leadership, volunteerism, etc. Even then 80 out 1200 - do the math.
The way it worked for my d - she was put in a group of 15 girls with a leader girl who depledged her sorority leading up to and through rush. They’d meet up and discuss rush, the rules, what to wear, etc. They went out to dinner and really got to know each other. The first round of parties, these girls went together from house to house. Then the girls write their bottom sorority in order of favorite to least favorite. The next morning d would go meet her pi chi (group leader) who handed her the schedule for the next round. The computer would try and match each girl to her top choices. However, if one of her top choices didn’t have her on their list high enough, that party would be dropped off her list and they’d fill it in with her top choice of her bottom. The goal is to keep the girls schedule as full as possible. So if you go in with an open mind that you want to be where you feel you fit, and where you’re wanted, the placement rate is extremely high.
In talking to D … every girl who didn’t make it to the end dropped out for a variety of reasons - top reason being, once they saw it, they realized it wasn’t for them. Very few she heard of dropped out because they didn’t get abc house. She didn’t hear of a single person being dropped completely everywhere.
As I understand RFM, the way it bites is it sets maximums that a house can invite back after the first round of parties, and also the second round. So, most rushees will learn quickly that they won’t be in ABC house, and they can then spend more time investigating the other houses where they have a chance.
Pizzagirl, maybe the sororities at your campus already did that, or maybe there weren’t two or three houses that were overwhelmingly popular. But as I understand it, at other schools RFM is making a difference, getting more rushees into sororities, because rushees are spending more time with the sororities that in the end will offer them bids.
Eyemamom, I’m interested that your daughter says that the biggest reason young women at her campus dropped out of recruitment is they decided it just wasn’t for them. That’s not surprising, really. A young woman might not know what sorority life is like, and when she gets exposed to it, she may decide that it just doesn’t appeal for one reason or another.
@Pizzagirl The main difference with RFM is that chapters are told (although non binding) exactly how many PNMs to bring back for each round. This number is a mathematical formula based on that chapter’s historical return rate for that round, number of PNMs, number of legacies, etc. It’s a live-time formula run continually through that rush period by a trained RFM specialist.
This forces the strongest rushers to release some PNMs earlier than they normally would, allowing PNMs to look at more realistic options earlier on. Statistically weaker houses thus get more returns across all rounds, leaving them with more PNMs to possibly make quota. Statistically, more PNMs then get bids.
In our (my?) day, the stronger houses invited tons of PNMs back in the beginning rounds- because they could- and of course retained most of them. Now that’s not advised. Now when PNM “A” has her heart set on “Alpha Beta Delta,” and they release her after round one because they are limited in their invitations, that opens a spot for her at another houses’ next round. The house benefits with collectively more PNMs available for each round, and the PNM gets to see her realistic choices early on. Like @eyeamom said, PNMs are forced to keep an open mind and accept maximum invites because they must do so to get a bid.
Bottom line? We didn’t have math on our side. The stronger houses kept getting bigger and weaker houses stayed stagnant or shrank.
@"Cardinal Fang" I’m repeating myself, but absolutely I would prefer this for my daughter. In my day, there were LOTS of girls who got no bid because the strongest houses ruled the process. I’ll take a 94% chance any day!
RFM seems like a better system for rushees, and for the sorority system as a whole. To me, it seems needlessly unkind to allow the more popular houses to string along women whom they will not accept, and RFM minimizes that.
My d knew nothing about sororities beyond the movies. We talked about it and researched and discovered the hoops you have to go through, and that you do it freshman year or essentially never. So her attitude going in was that she was going to see for herself. And we said all along, every day YOU decide whether this is something you want to do. No pressure on this end to do anything to please us. She is a girls girl, if you know what I mean. She never had a sister, and lived far from girl cousins and dreamed of having tons of close girlfriends and everything that seemed so sweet in movies. I haven’t talked about it with her lately. It just seems like a pretty small part of her college experience. And it is so big she really struggled making connections. She was mostly afraid of hazing, it just doesn’t exist in her world. Unless getting gifts and going to parties is hazing.
I knew nothing about it when I went through, other than my mom had some friends who wrote recs for me. I wound up joining a house I didn’t even have a rec for and hadn’t heard of til I got to school.
I’ve been reading about recruitment, and I see that some sororities reject (release?) some women because their grades are too low. Is this high school GPA? How do the sororities know the woman’s GPA? And why do these women get rejected, instead of being told beforehand not to consider those sororities, not to go to their parties, because they fall below minimum standards?
@"Cardinal Fang" (can’t get your name to hyperlink, sorry)
Every sorority has a published minimum GPA on the school recruitment website. An individual chapter’s GPA may in fact be higher than the GPA needed to qualify for recruitment by the school. It’s also typically in the PNM handbook and is always made very clear to them in orientation.
Sadly, some PNMs chose to hope for the best and think it may be overlooked. In fact, a GPA exception is extremely unlikely and would have to be authorized by the very highest members of the National organization. IE it almost never happens, even if the PNM is a legacy.
PMNs are required to submit their transcript when registering for recruitment. If recruitment is at the beginning of school, grades are cumulative from high school. If recruitment is in the spring or the PNM is an upperclassman, the GPA used will be cumulative from the university.
All schools have a minimum published GPA for recruitment eligibility, as do all chapters, as I mentioned.
In fact, the all-sorority and all-fraternity average GPAs are consistently higher than the all-school GPAs on most campuses.
In most sororities, Members must also continue to meet or exceed the published academic requirements of the chapter.
Was that always the case, Osserpusser? I didn’t submit a hs transcript, my “girls” didn’t when I was a rush counselor, and we never discussed one word’s worth about grades when I was asst rush dir. We had fall rush back then and frankly anyone who had the GPA to get into this school more than met whatever minimum the chapter might have had. It was a complete non-issue - no one who only had a 2.8 or whatever in hs was there in the first place.
