what informal recruitment means

I'm seeing a lot of comments saying "blah blah's doing informal obviously they didn't recruit well." Ya that's not really how it works.

Informal recruitment is not directly reliant on how a chapter recruited during formal recruitment. So who does informal? A chapter participates in informal recruitment if they currently do not meet Panhellenic total. Total is different than quota. Total is just that, the total number of women in a chapter. So let's say a chapter has 195 women and total is 200. They're doing informal and accepting 5 more women. Even if they met quota. Quota is just new members, total is everybody.

So what does that mean about how that chapter performed during formal? Honestly not much, again they don't go hand in hand. A chapter can meet quota and still participate in informal. A chapter can have an amazing recruitment, and still do informal. Maybe they just had a lot of people graduate early. Maybe they had some people drop due to finances. You don't know the reason, especially when you aren't even in that chapter.

All houses go through cycles of high and low membership. It happens, it's normal. Every house has and will do informal again. It changes specifically year to year, but seriously every. single. house. does it.

Moral of the story, don't make baseless assumptions.