DBB's Retro Recruitment Thread

[DeltaBetaBaby]

Okay, I am going to do mine, just because irishpipes got me all nostalgic. Sigh.

I rushed at Illinois in 1999. I will use code names, and reveal at the end. It has been 8 years, and, being a midwestern school, chapters have changed a lot. This is a campus where one good rush can put a struggling chapter back on the map, and I saw it happen while I was there. I also knew nothing about reputations, and later found out that some of the houses I didn't like were top chapters. Who knew? So take my opinions with a grain of salt.

So, the mix has changed a little bit from IP's rush. The chapters are as follows:

Alpha Chi Omega
Alpha Delta Pi
Alpha Epsilon Phi
Alpha Gamma Delta
Alpha Omicron Pi
Alpha Phi
Chi Omega
Delta Delta Delta
Delta Gamma
Delta Zeta
Gamma Phi Beta
Kappa Alpha Theta
Kappa Delta
Kappa Kappa Gamma
Phi Mu
Phi Sigma Sigma
Pi Beta Phi
Sigma Delta Tau
Sigma Kappa
-------------------

Okay, beforehand, I knew the following:

Big brother (IRL) was a senior when I was a freshman. Most of his female friends were Ice Pearls, including one I had hung out with a lot while visiting him. My mom had been a Heart's Desire, at this same campus, and she had taken me to their house a few times when visiting my brother. I knew a few other people in each of those chapters, because they both drew heavily from my, um, "social crowd" (and that will give them away for most of you).

Let's see...a close male friend in a fraternity had told me that the Aquatic Blisses were the best chapter on campus because they were sweet, down-to-earth, cute girls.

That's about it. I was rushing with three other girls on my floor, none of whom knew much about any of the houses either. None of them were in my rush group.

I don't remember much about Orientation, other than really wanting to get it over with and get to the chapters. Our schedule was:

Orientation (Wednesday)
Open houses: 13 chapters (Friday)
Open houses: 9 chapters (Saturday)
First Invitational: 7 chapters (Sunday)
First Invitational: 3 chapters (Tuesday)
Second Invitational: 5 chapters (Friday)
Preference: 3 chapters (Saturday)
Bid day (Sunday)

There were 22 chapters in the open house round because we had breaks from the NPC groups where we we sit in a classroom and the associate members of the CPH would come talk to us (and we visited the one with a house).

In later years, the Tuesday night was eliminated, and we did First Invitational all in one day.

Also, I have no rush book, so I am going totally off of memory, but I do have a lot of details in my brain.