Hi, all! Sorry if this is not the right board to be posting this on. I have a few questions about recruitment.
I just went through formal recruitment as a second semester freshman. My school is relatively small (less than 10,000 total undergrads), with only 4 sororities on campus. Of those, three are NPC and one is local.
Please bear with me, I'm new to all of this so I don't know if recruitment varies majorly from school to school or if it's generally the same!
After the first three nights of recruitment, all the PNMs found out if they were invited to a preference party. I thought I had done really well at recruitment--I talked to a lot of girls from all four chapters, had some really nice conversations, and walked away feeling pretty confident about everything! But yesterday, when preference invites came out, I found out that I was only invited to one party (the local sorority). I was completely heartbroken and have no idea what I could have done, or was supposed to do differently.
Please do not read this wrong--I was not upset because it was a local sorority! For me, I couldn't see myself fitting in there, and didn't think it was a group I could really picture myself becoming a part of. I was not going to attend a preference party and potentially take someone else's spot just to go to a preference party.
So this is why I'm here: I have a few questions about what to do next.
- Do any other schools do "open bids?" My college holds open bids, but I'm not sure what determines whether or not one will be held for a sorority. If so...what can I expect? Is it like formal recruitment in one day?
- Is it a "thing" to send thank you notes to sororities you turned down? I did not accept a preference party invitation to the sorority for which I received an invite, but was wondering if I should reach out to them and thank them for the opportunity anyways. I don't know if this is a faux pas, or if it's something anyone actually does, but I kind of want to let them know that I appreciated their invitation.
- Would rushing be pointless after this semester? I am not planning to be on campus for both Spring 2017 and Spring 2018. I don't want this to hurt my chances in the future, but I have wanted to be in a sorority for a really long time and don't want to end up disappointed again.
Sorry this is so long...it kind of turned into me just dumping everything into one post. And I apologize if any of these questions get asked a lot. There's a lot happening in my brain right now after this past week and I needed to put all my questions into one place!