This was one of the more recent ones, but there have been others.

Yup, that was the one.

The ones where I know we did it, the PNMs had no clue - at least they weren't told by PH that some of our women were from elsewhere. I can see where it might be a drawback if they were told.

I think it would be more of a drawback if they showed up on bid day and wondered where in blue blazes that nice girl was that they talked to all through rush and why the chapter had suddenly shrank to half the size it had been.

Possibly but as it turned out, they didn't recall. And I think I can honestly say that most wouldn't. Both instances were on mega Greek campuses - 14-16 groups on campus. And as the week wound down to fewer numbers, fewer of the out of town folks were used so that by pref, it was all that chapter. You just have to work it right.....

I know our Panhellenic has rules about having other chapters help with recruitment. The other chapter must wear name tags stating which chapter they are from. Panhellenic announces it to the other chapters so everyone knows what is going on and then of course word would get out to all the PNMs.

Was this recent, as in the past 5 years? Had this happen at that campus before?

Not that recently...and have no idea whether anyone else there had done it - on either campus....

Yeah, it would be different today with most places but at the time, we didn't have to do this. I'm pretty sure both times were in the 90's - I know one was for sure and the other I feel fairly certain was.

The visiting chapter reminds me of me being disappointed that the girl I put as my #1 choice for Big Sis was actually an advisor (she was a grad student, and young looking) who wasn't even an ASA. You can understand my confusion though since she lived in the house and went to more events than most of the collegiate sisters. I think I was more upset that the NM Ed person didn't bother to tell me anything, though, and it took me wondering where she was at initiation to find out. I think she eventually AIed, though.

One of the other problems a WRC faces is that not everyone is a great rusher, and having SO many women come back, you want to be sure you are pairing your best rushers with the women who are most interested in your chapter.

I've often wondered, once the change was made to PRUSH, why they don't let the chapters see the PNM preferences. I think that knowing which women didn't want the WRC under any circumstances would allow the WRC to better pair rushers with PNM's. It would also allow the chapters who have to make deeper cuts to have an idea of how they should issue invites, as well.

PRUSH?

PNM's rank right after parties. Contrast with SORUSH, where PNM's get a list of invitations and pick from them.

They see the rankings. The RFM report contains all that information....and then some!

They as in GA and RFM specialist? I can tell you I have never been able to see which PNMs rank a chapter high/low. I do see how many PNMs ranked a chapter 1 but not exactly which PNM.

Me neither, Mevara.

Sorry to temporarily derail...

This TOTALLY reminds me of Pref...I went to pref with ABC and XYZ who were both my legacy chapters (and a third that doesn't matter to this story). At XYZ, I had really hit it off all week with a girl who was just FUN - loved her and she made me want XYZ more each day. Could totally see her as my big sis, and I think that she even hinted around about that being a possibility. Well, in the end, I was bawling at Pref, told my "friend" at XYZ that I was going ABC and thanked her for such a good week. She was very gracious and told me it was OK & that she understood.

3 weeks later, I ran into her at a football game and she told me she went inactive/alumna status right after rush was over! :eek: She'd been planning to do it all along...

I would have been SO pissed not to see her on Bid Day and beyond - she was basically the only person I'd gotten to know really well!!!

OK, now I see what you mean. I thought you meant the final report. Not sure I'd want to see a daily ranking form each PNM. They flop around like a fish out of water. It could be totally reversed the next day. The one on one feedback is usually more important to me.

One on one feedback is good from good rushers in small rushes, but I don't think even the best rushers in the SRCs could gauge interest among 1000+ rushees. You might not make big changes on who talks to whom between the ranked chapters, but if you have a girl who has you in the top set, you want to make sure her opinion of you stays strong. Having her be rushed one on one when the girls who had you last get doubled would seem like a better use of resources. If they don't share that information now, I think they should. If Panhellenic wants to get the WRCs competitive, this is one way they could give them a boost.

Having the TIME to effectively use that list is a whole different thing. When you get your lists minutes before the first party you don't have much time.

I think bringing in another chapter to help a WRC is better than double- or triple-rushing, but it's not exactly going to fly under the radar with all the PNMs. They'll figure it out, and those who didn't will hear it from the other girls.

Ideally, you'd sandwich WRC members with visiting members in rotation so that the PNMs get to talk to members of the WRC, but don't have to be double/triple rushed. In that scenario, it's a win-win. Even better is if the chapters have some kind of relationship to one another, and the visiting chapter members are prepped appropriately on the campus culture and specific activities the WRC plans and participates in (this doesn't always happen!)

Best case scenario is that the PNM doesn't think too much of it and gets to meet at least one or two members of the actual chapter, and has a better experience at that party than she would have otherwise. Worst case scenario is that the PNM didn't get a chance to meet anyone from the chapter, and is either duped into liking women who she'll never see again or she's completely turned off; or that the PNM figures out toward the end of the party that she's been talking to visiting sisters and feels betrayed/duped.

Getting a text delimited file with headers that can be dropped into a spreadsheet would make sorting and or querying very rapid for a knowledgeable spreadsheet user.

Without giving away our "rotation" secrets, there are ways to move PNMs thru to meet more women esp when you have to rush 1 on 2 or 3. We've done it effectively...not with Alabama size numbers but at some smaller schools - even one southern state u.

We have 15 minutes between parties and we manage to match all of ours between - and that's having to recruitment 1 on 2....

Whoa! (ala Bill& Ted's Excellent Adventure.)

You do what you have to do!

That's why as the week goes on and the parties smaller, you pull the non chapter folks back and recruit with just the chapter members

If you're going to use out of chapter members, this might be a good time to try the team rush format mentioned above. If you had one local and one "foreigner" and 3 or 4 rushees, then the foreigner might be used pretty effectively. This is especially true if she's a rush pro and can minimize awkward breaks in conversation. If done correctly (and I think it would require LOTS of coaching to be done right) it could be a great tool for teaching on the job. So to speak.

I don't know why this has generated such interest. I just mentioned it as a method that had worked a couple of times in very specific situations. It would never work everywhere and I would never recommend it across the board.

I think it can work if the chapters doing it are very similar and have a relationship. For example - I think RaggedyAnn's chapter and mine could have definitely helped "pad" each others' rooms in rush and it would have probably been a big hit, since the chapters had a history of hanging out together and being a lot alike. :)

But when you send girls from Big School Lots-O-Lilys Chapter to help out Small School Levis Chapter - well, it's going to not only make PNMs who connect w/ the BSLOLs feel duped, it's going to make the PNMs who liked the SSLs very wary. Like, does the chapter not feel secure enough about itself that they have to bring these other women in? They're not going to understand "double rushing" or the mechanical part of it.

One point being overlooked in this thread and one which our (AXO) headquarters covered in training this summer was the benefits RFM gives the PNMs.

Since strong recruiting chapters, especially ones with low quotas benefit from sticking the the RFM calculations the PNMs have a easier and greater chance at finding a home at a chapter that is realistically a better fit for them.

Sorry to bump an old thread, but I had another thought on recruitment strategies for WRCs. I mentioned upthread that my chapter was on the weaker half of recruiting strength on campus. DeltaBetaBaby's initial post supposed a ranking of PNMS 1-100. (Of course, you can't do a linear ranking because one chapters #1-10 will be different than anothers, but I get the overall point.)

Within each chapter, there are also women of different recruiting ability. You could take our 100 recruiting sisters and put them on a scale as well. Round One was always random as far as pairing for the most part, but then we'd aim to pair our top rushers with our top PNMs in future rounds. Makes sense, right?

In thinking about it, that may not have been the best strategy. Most of the women we'd put with our top rushers were also still attending parties at the strongest chapters, and were likely to go there no matter how strong our strongest recruiters did. Instead of putting our strongest recruiters with the girls who were the strongest women we had a realistic chance at getting (Say, on that 1-100 scale, the women in the 30-60 range), we'd put them with those 10-29 range girls who came back Round 2 but were likely to decline our Round 3 invitation.

It would inevitably come to pass that on bid day, our strongest recruiters would check the bid lists for their "rush crushes" that they'd preffed only to find they had joined one of the SRCs on campus. If we instead had focused our top recruiting talent on our top realistic recruitment prospects, perhaps we'd have gotten more of them to choose us. Just a thought...

Oh, this is very interesting; thanks for bringing it up!

Even if the first round is random, I think most chapters put their best rushers at the front of the line to pick up women at the door. I would also make the assumption that the most desirable PNM's are closest to the front of the line coming in***. So, by default, you are going to put the best rushers with the most desirable PNM's, when perhaps that will work against you.

***I know this is a pretty big assumption, but I think generally the most confident, outgoing women will find their way to the front.

That said, I also think that many WRC's don't truly know who their best recruiters are. My partner and I, sophomore year, had some of the best return rates, along with another pair that I would call a little bit, um, "bookish". I don't think anyone expected that, as compared to the women that most would consider more traditionally popular.

^^Excellent point.

Not only do you have to be realistic, you never know - the "Miss Everything" rushee may be sick to death of being paired with super gregarious, super chatty women, and welcome more than you know a rusher who is a little more laid back. It may make her feel a little less like a commodity.

On another note, chapters have to remember that the most outgoing women in regular situations are NOT necessarily the best rushers. (Jinx DBB, buy me a Coke.)

I think this is where recruitment strength and realistic expectations from both sides needs consideration. Instead of putting that top rusher on that most sought after girl, put her with the girl you think has the strongest chance of being a great fit but maybe not the most prestigious girl walking through the door. Or put in a numbers structure, assuming 100 rushers and 100 rushees, put the #1 rusher with the #25 rushee and put your #25 rusher with your #1 rushee. You still want that dream rushee to have a positive experience, since you never know how the rest of her rush is going ;)

I'd say the same thing about double rushing. Pick out a couple girls from each party who are realistic "gets" who you would also be really happy with, and rush them solo. Double up the top and bottom rushees.

I'd love to know if any of these tactics get used this fall and how it turns out.

Similarly, introducing PNM's to the president or rush chair...if they were introduced to exec members at every chapter, no biggie, but if your chapter is the only one where that happened, it makes them feel special.

Well, I hope this doesn't happen at schools where the PNMs line up alphabetically or by height.

You have to be careful about this. It can come off as desperate if you're the only chapter that does it.

By height? Really? That's a thing?

I couldn't remember if I had asked about it before and don't know how to use the search function well, but I really think PNM lined up randomly back in the day for most of the rounds. It wouldn't surprise me if the recruitment groups sometimes just goofed around lining up different ways for fun.

Can anyone from UGA speak to whether anything but pref is matched up in advance these days? My guess is that it varies a lot based on your return rate and how many girls you have a party, but for the groups that invite a whole lot of girls to each party, are they walking the whole recruitment group in with a certain order and have the chapters lined up to catch them?

I'm not asking for recruitment trade secrets. I'm just curious. It seems so hard to pull off in a meaningful way with big numbers. By pref, I get it, but for the early rounds?