Sorority Recruitment process

In this Issue: we discuss Panhellenic (i.e., sorority) recruitment

Note: I am on PTO for the rest of this week, but have pre-posted content for you

Young women wanting to join sororities will move in on January 7 and begin recruitment on January 8; your daughters will be receiving information directly from the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Engagement about the particulars. This post is more about trying to offer families some perspective and advice on how to support your daughters through the process.  

Before I begin, let me make my annual disclaimer: I am neither pro- nor anti-Greek life. I am pro every student making the right choice for them. I also don’t work in sorority and fraternity engagement, so these opinions are mine, not Wake’s.

First let’s talk process. Here are some basics about how sorority recruitment plays out:

Sororities may use the formal recruitment period in January to refine a list of women that they have been getting to know in the fall to make sure that there is a good fit between that woman and the chapter. 

Whether they knew people in the sorority already or not, all Potential New Members, or PNMs, initially meet all of our chapters so they can have exposure to all groups. After the first day, the mutual selection process begins: all PNMs will rank the chapters based on who they would like to get to know better, and the chapters also rank the PNMs based on who they are most interested in.

With each successive day of recruitment, PNMs will be invited back to fewer chapter events as they and the chapters continue to submit their preferences and narrow down their options. During any given round, a PNM may find herself released by a sorority she was interested in. Sometimes PNMs are “fully released,” which means they are not invited back to any of the groups. While the goal of sorority recruitment is to place as many PNMs as possible, it is not a guarantee that a woman will receive a bid to join a chapter. 

On Preference Night (Jan. 11), women can rank up to 2 chapters that they are still being considered for (though it is possible they will only have one active invitation). PNMs will get a phone call on Jan. 12 to let them know if they got a bid, or were not placed. Those with bids go to an assembly in the afternoon and then are welcomed by their new chapter.

When I talk to young women about the Panhellenic recruitment process, I do it by story and with a visual.

I stink at math, so I need to use round numbers. Assume there are 500 PNMs. We have seven active sororities. Each sorority will have a new member (pledge) class of approximately the same size; the recruitment process is built to place as many women as possible. But that does not mean every woman can join her top-choice chapter. 

As long as I have been at Wake, there has been an informal ranking of which sorority is the most desirable, and which are less so (though the most/least popular can change from year to year). Most of our young women are high achieving students who throughout high school had come out on top in terms of leadership positions, club membership, etc., so many of them enter recruitment expecting that things will go their way (since they always have in the past). The reality is that we might have 500 young women who would love to be a member of the same one or two sororities, and that math doesn’t work: if 500 women are vying for 140 spots, not every woman will get her first choice, or maybe even her second choice. 

As recruitment progresses, it is not uncommon for women not to be invited back to the sorority(ies) they hoped to join. Sometimes in that moment, when their feelings are hurt, PNMs withdraw from the whole sorority recruitment process, thinking “If I can’t be a [insert sorority name here], I don’t want to be anything at all,” assuming (wrongly, in my opinion) that they can only be happy in certain sororities and not others. If your Deac finds herself in this situation, please encourage her to pause before deciding to withdraw. Withdrawal can be a hasty decision she might later regret. 

I always urge PNMs to stick with the process and see it through. Don’t drop out if you don’t get invited back to your first, second, or even third choice of group. I deeply believe that every single sorority has a wide range of sisters in their chapter: studious ladies, party ladies, people on both sides of the political aisle, people of religious practices (or none at all), etc. in every single group. It is a myth to think that you can only find sisterhood in certain groups. And like the Harry Potter sorting hat, ladies seem to land in the chapters they are well suited for if they will just trust the process. 

Sometimes there are women who don’t want to accept a bid to a newer, smaller, and/or less established sorority – they want to join a chapter with a higher profile on campus. When I was a student, a new sorority came to campus, and women were unsure of what it would be like to join the new group, when the older groups seemed cooler. Several of my freshmen hallmates decided to join that group and build it from the ground up – and it is now a strong, successful chapter. But it took some women getting in on the ground floor, so to speak, to help make it so.

So in the event that your daughter does not get asked back to a sorority she wanted but IS asked back to another sorority, urge her to give that chapter a try. 

An upperclassman Deac mom wrote to me several years ago to tell us her daughter had just been named to an important position within her sorority, and mom wanted to share this bit of very sage advice:

“After [my daughter’s] rocky rush experience, she found the absolute right sorority for her.  I know you will get calls and emails about recruitment from anxious parents come January – I was one of them. But, I wanted to pass along this information in hopes that it might bring some reassurance to another freshman mom and daughter to participate fully in the process and the outcome will be as it should – even if it feels otherwise in January.”

Parting thoughts:

If your daughter is going to go through recruitment, encourage her to see the process through. Trust the process and the outcome, and don’t get caught up in preconceived notions of where she should be.

Encourage your daughter to consider all chapters, not just the ones she is already familiar with. Your daughter may know a couple of members from a chapter through her classes or other student organizations. But slight familiarity with a single chapter does not mean that chapter is the best place for her. Remind her to keep an open mind as she gets to know everyone.

Go into the process understanding that not every PNM gets her first choice. In addition to managing your own young woman’s expectations, help plant the seed to be mindful of other women who might not be having the recruitment they hoped for, and if so to offer those friends their support. Should your daughter have a hard time during the recruitment period, encourage her to seek support from one of the many resources available to her (her Greek Recruitment Counselor or GRC, her RA, the Counseling Center, 336-758-CARE, etc.). 

Good luck to all young women who will be embarking on this process in January! We’ll cover men’s fraternity recruitment tomorrow and NPHC (National Pan-Hellenic Conference) intake early next week.