Something needs to change

[NerdyGreek]

When recruitment ends and the advice freely being given out is, "Nobody likes their house at first; you'll learn to like it" I feel like something has to change.

My daughter is contemplating de-pledging. So are many of her friends. She's talked to about a dozen girls she was friends with going into rush. Two got into sororities they actually wanted. The other ~10 got bids for houses they didn't like. We're not talking 2nd choices; we're talking houses that were low on the pref lists after the first two rounds. One of her friends has to de-pledge because she got a bid for one of the most expensive sororities - and she can't afford it. (It's over $1000/year more than the one my daughter is in.)

I blame variable quota and RFM. Girls are dropped left and right early on, and are forbidden from dropping houses (they can only rank) which is how you end up with girls in houses they can't afford. Then you have situations like one of D's friends who was dropped by all the houses except ABC because her sister was an ABC at the school. No one asked her if she liked her sister and wanted to be in the same sorority with her. (The answer would have been "no.") It's only the second year of using this combo and I've got to question whether it's the right thing to be doing. I feel like the effort to even house sizes and maximize the number of bids given out is creating artificial groupings of girls who have surviving the process as the sole thing they have in common.

I'm wondering if anyone else involved with a school that uses variable quota and RFM has seen problems with retention?