Sorority/Fraternity bid questions
Hi my daughter is strongly considering Ed to bucknell. We are aware it is a reach but she loves the education major program of studies. My friend’s daughter who went to Pitt was guaranteed a bid there ( may not be your preferred choice but a bid nonetheless). Our tour guide at bucknell mentioned that he thought bucknell guaranteed bids for those rushing. Does anyone know if this is the case? It may make decoding to go Ed a little easier. If Greek life is so predominant being a part of it may be more desirable than not being apart of it if a bid in some capacity is guaranteed.
Hopefully some people with more recent knowledge can answer this for you. I’m an alum from the late 90’s, so things may have changed. I’ve never heard of official guaranteed bids. However, both sororities and fraternities at Bucknell have a social hierarchal structure like so many things in life. Some are for the most popular kids, and some are not. Back in my day, there were a few sororities and fraternities that were unlikely to deny a bid to anyone because they needed numbers. So, in that respect, you’re sort of guaranteed a bid. But the way rush worked (at least back then) was there were several rounds. You went to all the sororities in round one and less in each of the following rounds. Sororities would make cuts, but if the rushee had more invites than spots in a round, she had to make cuts. I forget how many rounds there were, but the last one was prefs, where you only go to 2 sororities. If your final two spots are filled with the more popular sororities, there is a chance you could get cut from both and without a bid. I think that’s a really rare occurrence, but that really did happen to a friend of mine. She was perfectly fine within a week or so and fully enjoyed Bucknell, but I’m sure Bid Day was not fun for her sophomore year. I had several friends both male and female that were not involved in Greek life and still enjoyed Bucknell.
^^ +1 to everything @Chescomom said. I am an alum and my DS is a grad. He rushed but did not end up pledging and had a great experience there.
In my experience, sorority life is not as dominate in everyday life as fraternity. There are no sorority houses so women often room with women from other sororities etc. I would not base a decision on whether or not there are automatic bids; I would consider whether you want Greek life at all or not. Not being in a fraternity or sorority really doesn’t impact your social life. There is so much more to do on campus.
My D doesn’t go to Bucknell, but I think it works similarly at all universities. I think @Chescomom is right. While they don’t exactly guarantee a bid, I think many schools have enough sororities/fraternities that a bid is all but guaranteed if the rushee stays in the process and doesn’t drop the sorority that wants her. The only possible correction/addition I would make to Chescomom is that my understanding is that at the pref stage, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get into one of the two houses (barring some major issue), but some girls do a “suicide rush” where they only list their first choice and they may or may not be selected by their top pick, and the other sorority doesn’t get to make a bid because they were dropped when they weren’t ranked as the second choice by the rushee. As this poster notes, there does seem to be a hierarchy on each campus, so I think what happens is that if a girl ends up with a “top house” and “lower tier” house on pref (rather than, say, two top houses), she might pref the top house and not rank the lower house which increases the chances that she ends up with no bid at all. In short, I recommend being openminded to all houses and options to increase the chances of a bid and most importantly, to find the right fit.
You’re probably right. Now that I think about it, my friend might have suicided only one sorority at prefs and not made it. I do remember she really wanted this one and didn’t get in and found out the morning of bid day. It was a long time ago and I don’t remember all the rush details! I do have to agree with your advice about being openminded. I almost dropped out of rush the round right before prefs because my top choice dropped me. I stayed in it though and ended up being very happy with my sorority even though it wasn’t on my radar at the beginning of rush.
Most of the sororities (the 26 national ‘traditional’ sororities, the NPC sororities) now use a program that almost guarantees a bid IF the potential new member (PNM) accepts the maximum number of parties in each round.
So say the college has 10 sororities (only counting the NPC chapters) and 1000 women going through rush, that would mean the quota is 100, so each house could bid 100 girls. But what was happening was 200 wanted one house and only 40 wanted another, so in the end not all 1000 girls would get bids. How they do it now is they restrict the numbers the popular houses can invite back to the second, third, and maybe fourth parties, and allow the newer/smaller houses to invite almost everyone back to the next rounds. So all 1000 invited to the first, then for the larger houses (determined by who took quota the year before and how many members are in the house) and maybe only 500 to party Two, and then maybe 200 to party three and if there is a fourth, then maybe only 150. For the bids they’ll put 100 names in alphabetical order and hope they all accept, but put the next 50 in the order they’d like to invite them to join. A computer goes thru and finds Suzie Smith - match - and then goes to the next name. If Suzie Smith didn’t accept the bid, they’ll go to the alternate list until they find a match of both the girl and the house.
For the girl to get a ‘guaranteed’ bid, she has to accept the maximum number of parties for each round. if she’s invited back to all 10 houses for Party Two and there are only seven parties for night two, she has to drop three. If she’s only invited to six, she has to accept all six to keep the ‘guarantee.’ Same for Party Three (maybe five parties?) and then the final night the two or three (whichever number that college has as the max). If after doing all this she’s still not on the top 100 of any the final three who invited her (very unusual) she’d still get a bid to one of the houses (should be her top house) in what is called ‘quota plus’ and the new system allows the houses to take more than quota because of the guarantee. So the top house could issue 110 bids. All of this is invisible to the houses and the girls and no one will know who was in the top 100 or on the next list of 50 and all receive the bids at the same time and there is a lot of shouting and cheering.
If the girl is invited to three parties the last night and only accepts two, there is no guarantee (but really, still a very good chance of receiving a bid).
The new system has made a big difference in Rush and how many girls receive bids and join. At Alabama, for example, they had about 2500 go through rush and 2300 accept bids. Those 200 who didn’t receive/accept bids include those who dropped out of rush, those who decided not to join, and some who didn’t accept the max number of invitations so didn’t have a guarantee at the end.
(And it isn’t a true guarantee because a girl could receive no invitations to the second, third and last party, but that’s very rare. The houses want to invited the maximum number they can to each round)
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