Since West Virginia is now part of the Big XII, do you need a rec there?

Changing athletic conferences has nothing to do with the competitiveness of the greek system. If you needed recs. there before, you will need them now. Maybe someone familiar with WVU will be able to tell you if you need recs.

Bumping for someone who asked for this information.

So I just went out there looking for recs and got 3 of them which I dont know if those are my top pics as Im trying to keep an open mind about all 16 of the houses at FSU. How does the recommendation help me? Does it guarantee a bid or is it just something that is used to tell a little more about me and possibly get me a bit more noticed.

How can you have top picks yet? Recruitment hasn't even started.

No, a rec in no way guarantees anything. Not having a rec can practically guarantee an automatic cut at some chapters. That is all you are protecting yourself from, and you are giving the chapters more information about you to use when making membership selection decisions. If you only have recs for 3 chapters, you really need to be doing everything you can to get 13 more, and quickly.

Think about recruitment like a job interview. At a school where not many people have recs - a rec can be like a letter of introduction to someone you don't know or someone sending you to talk to someone about an unadvertised job opening that might be a good fit for you. It can help your resume get into the "must look at" pile.

At a school where everyone has recs - it can be kind of like a background check - is your resume really as good as you say? Or it can be like a really good letter of reference - she's awesome you should take her! Again, it can help your resume get into the "must look at" pile. (unless you don't make grades....)

In either case, member selection is up to the chapter, so while a really good reference can help, there very likely wouldn't be any decisions made on just that.

I have a question about recommendations, and I have searched this forum but cannot find similar discussions. My daughter will be participating in recruitment at a large school with a very active greek life. When we attended orientation earlier this summer, the greek life rep responded to a specific question by saying that recs "aren't needed" and even went so far as to give the impression securing them is a waste of time. Fast forward to a couple of weeks before rush and I learn on this forum that recs are "absolutely necessary" at her school.

Fortunately she was able to secure a few in the short time we had prior to the rec letter deadline, but had we gotten accurate information at orientation, she could have gotten recs to all the chapters. Why would the greek life representative give incorrect information?

Recs are not required to participate in recruitment.

Beyond that Campus Panhellenic can not make statements regarding the membership selections of individual GLOs. Membership selection is private.

In a school where there are MANY PNMs that it becomes a de facto process that Recs are required as a simple means of cutting PNMs. Even if recs are not necessarily de jure.

Basically if you have to sort out through a lot of PNMs cutting those without recs essentially makes life easier.

An analogy may be resumes in a highly competitive job application process with typos are thrown out even if the applicant may have been the best person for the job.

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I should have read above, HQWest pretty much answered your questions in the preceding post.

Good grief, how did I miss this? debann, just like Irishpipes and HQWest told you, you need recs to EVERY sorority at FSU-not just your top three. There is no wiggle room. Get cracking!

Going in with top choices already and recs. only for those three sororities is not good. PNMs are not in the drivers seat-the sororities are.

If the college you are attending says that it is the responsibility of the sororities to secure a recommendation for you, go check this thread. If your college is listed, get to work.

Another clue that you need recommendations is when the individual sorority chapter websites at your college list an address where recommendations should be sent. You can bet that if the sororities provide an address for recommendations, then you need them.

PNMs, repeat after me: nothing ever, ever guarantees a bid.

We should hang out a shingle and charge for all this advice. People don't value (acknowledge) things they receive for free,

Maybe eventually the complexion of the school will change and that might be the case, but nothing has happened in the short time since WVU's joined the Big XII. (Are they Big XIII now?) If you can get them, that's great, but they are not a mandatory for a successful rush.

But as we saw on another thread, the inverse is NOT true. If the sororities do not provide an address, it does not necessarily mean you don't need recs.

Too true!!