Snap bids

[gpb1874]

what aopirose said is correct. directly after bid matching, while everyone is still in the room (at least at my campus), we look at any unmatched women and see if those that did not make quota want to snap bid them. If someone is snap bid, it's often not a chapter they listed, although it could happen (if bid matching stops before all chapters meet quota except a couple and some women are left bidless due to how the process works).

If it's a chapter the woman did not list, Panhel would call and say "you did not receive a bid from the chapters on your list, but ABC wants to offer you a bid." ABC advisor may be present during that call and talk to the woman if she has any questions. The woman comes to sign her bid card before bid day festivities begin (if all works out well) and no one but the advisors know she was given a snap bid. I've only seen this done if the woman is on the chapter's bid list OR was really liked and ended up dropping out of recruitment. I'd assume the chapter would have discussed this possibility at some point during MS.

Here, women usually only self-release if they are sick, something serious happens (family related), they have a previous committment they cannot miss or they're called into work. They do not drop out with the hopes of getting a snap bid (usually 2 out of 3 chapters make quota).

In the example mentioned earlier of a legacy dropping out b/c she only wants her legacy house and just wants a snap bid at the end, she would be taking a SERIOUS risk. If that chapter gets to quota, she is screwed. The chapter could not hold open a spot for her during the bid matching process, even if they really wanted to offer her a bid.

I hope that makes sense. Let me know if it doesn't. There's a lot more detail that can be added, but I didn't want it to be too much info.

[mommamagnolia]

So is snap bidding different than quota additions? For example, quota was 58, but ABC actually takes 63. So are the 5 extra girls quota additions or snaps bids?

(sorry the pun, but this is all greek to me )

[violetpretty]

Originally Posted by mommamagnolia

So is snap bidding different than quota additions? For example, quota was 58, but ABC actually takes 63. So are the 5 extra girls quota additions or snaps bids?

(sorry the pun, but this is all greek to me )

Your example would be quota additions. Quota additions happen when ther are women who have maximized their options throughout recruitment (i.e. attends 3 preference parties and ranks all 3 chapters) and they end up bidless at the end of bid matching. Quota additions are to match as many women as possible. A PNM will never know if she was a quota addition or not.

Snap bids are for chapters who did not make quota at the end of bid matching. They will have a snap bidding list composed of women who released them or dropped out of recruitment that either the Panhellenic Association or the Rho Gammas will call to offer a bid. This takes place before bid day festivities and she will open an envelope like everyone else.

CR(continuous recruitment) happens after bid day and chapters that either did not make quota or who did make quota and are under total can hold informal recruitment events and offer bids.

[seraphimsprite]

Snap bidding procedure really does seem to vary from campus to campus. At the school where I went to undergrad, we were given a list from panhellenic of the girls who either dropped out of rush or did not get a bid after bid matching. We then went through the list, decided who we would be willing to offer a snap bid to and had a member call them to offer them a bid. We did the calls after bid matching (so if they didn't get a bid, they had already been notified by their Rho Chi and usually given a heads up that they might receive calls from sororities offering snap bids) but before the actual bid day activities. So if a girl accepted our snap bid, we told her to come to the bid day field and she would have a bid card waiting for her. The only people who knew that she was a snap bid were the members who were on the snap bidding team and panhellenic.

At the campus where I was an adviser, my chapter didn't ever have to snap bid so I'm not quite as familiar with the procedure but I know it was very different from what we did at my undergrad school. Instead of the chapter members being responsible for contacting the women who were eligible for snap bidding, the greek advisers called them and let them know that XYZ was offering them a bid. What I'm not sure about is how it worked when there were multiple chapters offering a snap bid to the same girl. I believe the greek adviser would let them know that XYZ and ABC were both offering her a snap bid, but don't quote me on that...

[UGAalum94]

These answers explain why you wouldn't really know how it worked unless you actually did bid matching or were the one who extended the snap bid. Thank you for explaining.

But in almost all of these examples, it seem like the only way that a girl might get a snap bid from a chapter that cut her would be in she dropped out of rush (which makes sense because if she continued, she would probably have matched with someone else).

Those of you who did snap bidding as advisers or bid matching teams, can you think of cases in which you gave a snap bid to a girl who you cut? (Not to be too darkly cynical, but isn't this where the stories about "computer glitches" usually have their origins?)

[AOE2AlphaPhi]

At my school, I know a girl who cut a sorority before preference, didn't get a bid from either of the houses she preffed, and got a snap bid from the house she cut. The house that got her decided to give her the snap bid after they saw that her best friend would be in the house. She got her bid card with everyone else and happily went off to her house.

[seraphimsprite]

Originally Posted by Alphagamuga

Those of you who did snap bidding as advisers or bid matching teams, can you think of cases in which you gave a snap bid to a girl who you cut?

I can think of one case from my undergraduate chapter where we gave a snap bid to a girl we had cut (although she ended up declining anyway.) But the reason I remember it was because it ended up being a bit of a "situation" in the chapter - basically the snap bidding team decided to offer the girl a bid because they had liked her even though she had been released by the chapter. But that definitely isn't how it's supposed to happen and we were chewed out by our chapter consultant for that one because we are not supposed to snap bid women who we have released. That might vary by sorority though so I can't speak for everyone.

As for the success of snap bidding...most of the women who I've seen picked up through snap bids (and actually accepted) were women who had dropped out of recruitment right before preference or decided not to sign their pref card and then had a change of heart the next day and were regretting their decision.

[NUBlue&Blue]

Do you think it happens more often when you only have 2 chapters at pref? We preffed 3 chapters because we had a bigger greek system, but I don't think I even knew what a snap bid was until my daughter went to college. I don't ever remember it happening in our sorority, but we also didn't (and still don't) have a quota system like most schools. But it would seem that just by adding that one more chapter to pref, you would have a lot more chances of matching as many girls as possible. (Keep in mind, I had a major with no math required )

[carnation]

I am all about quota additions! Somewhere on GC I started a thread about how we could maximize Greek membership--it kills me that we lose so many top girls during recruitment--but I like that girls who maximize their options are getting bids from 1 of their 3 preffed groups. Back in the day, so many women went to 2 prefs and were crosscut...

[UGAalum94]

Yes, I agree that being able to pref an additional group and quota additions are great!

The way I see it, quota additions don't do any real harm to the groups because if someone didn't pref at your house, you couldn't/shouldn't have much realistic expectation that a pnm is interested in your group. AND it's such an incentive for the girls to keep an open mind and list all the groups.

Sure there are a few girls who are removed from the possibility of snap bids for the smaller groups, but since the process is theoretically about mutual selection, I don't know that blocking a group that the girl did pref in favor of a group that she didn't is exactly "fair" to her, for lack of a better word.

Girls just need to be really careful about being ready to join any of the groups on the bid card.

It's really peculiar to me how little I can remember about how we actual got our members when I was in school, not that I'd want to discuss the details of membership selection here anyway, but really I'm almost a complete blank slate. I did pledge later, so I didn't do it three years that everyone else would, but other than a few contentious situations with particular girls, nada.

[NUBlue&Blue]

I have 4 kids, so my excuse is that I am missing some major brain cells!

[carnation]

OMG, NUBlue&Blue, I just came in from cleaning up the back yard and accidentally deleted part of your post in trying to quote you. I am so sorry.

[NUBlue&Blue]

No problem....I think I said that I couldn't really remember anything either until my daughter went to college because I moved away, didn't do anything with my sorority, got married, had a bunch of kids and got busy.

The more we talked about things when she was going through rush and after she pledged, the more things I started to remember.

But I think I did qualify it by saying that I probably won't remember everything because I have lost a lot of brain cells.

[33girl]

OK, I have a dumb question and I might get too far into ritual/membership selection, so forgive me if I do.

When I was in school we did the same thing ForeverRoses did - found out who didn't get matched and then it was a mad dash to get to their door before another sorority did. Since we were not a large school - we, as a chapter, knew all the girls who were going to be on our bid list. So if we saw Rosie Rushee didn't get matched and we knew she was on our bid list, we were running to get her.

But some people mentioned giving snaps to girls they cut or who cut them - sometimes way before pref. How would that fly? Would the whole chapter have to revote on her, or would they go back to the votes cast on whether to keep her at the last invitational party she was at to decide whether to offer her a bid?

I know what we did, but we were fairly small - what does a large chapter do? I mean, even if there's 1000 rushees and 200 girls in the chapter, if a rushee came through that NOBODY liked, could she conceivably end up on the snap bid list just to fill quota/total?

[SWTXBelle]

I think it would depend WHY the sorority had cut the girl - sometimes you (the GLO) have to do the equivilent of "regret with interest" - and those girls (the ones who were cut only for the sake of numbers) would be eligible for snap bids. Girls who were cut for other criteria (grades, personality, whatever) would not be. This is based on my experience as an advisor which was over 15 years ago, so it may not be true for all.