bid lists

Wait, hold on. Yes, the sororities all culled through hundreds of application & resume's all summer, they have already talked up their friends, and yes, lists have already been ordered. But that doesn't mean that there is never any movement in the lists. Even in the top houses, their target lists are around 600 with 300 at the tip top. Only a third of the girls the want will end up with bids. The other 2/3's will chose other houses. That is exactly who the top houses were forced to make such large cuts early, as to not waste time & energy. But the lists are constantly being shuffled through out the process.

With the lower houses, things are a little bit different. Yes, they have their lists of the girls they do not plan on giving bids to, but they wait each day to see who will be returning to them before they start any serious lists. There is no point in them focusing on those girls the top houses are fighting over.

I would consider it more of a "wish list" than a "bid list" As the above person wrote some sororities, not all, have a target list but that list can and does change through recruitment.

This is a common misunderstanding.

The woman who said "wish list" vs "bid list" is absolutely correct.

Sororities absolutely come into rush with lists of who they're interested in, from friends, connections, letters of rec, GPAs, resumes, even social media accounts.

Then through each round, those girls get scored. How varies from house to house, but each girl is scored by each active they meet. Those scores influence who gets invited back, either by voting session, or by inputting the scores into a computer with no chapter input.

Pref is the top girls the house wanted all week. Some girls on the wish list ended up not being good fits, some girls barely on our radar scored perfectly all week.

By pref, though, each house takes who they have left and creates a bid list in different ways. These are three houses here, all considered fairly strong:

House 1 - Takes the list of girls at pref, assigns a "5" to their favorite girls meeting the number of quota, a 3 to half the remaining names, a 1 to half the remaining names. The scores of each active are tabulated and the girls with the highest average go on top.
House 2 - Girls are given a colored marker and a list of girls at pref. They are allowed to highlight a specific number. The girls with the most highlights go first.
House 3 - No new voting is done. The average scores throughout the week are compiled, and the girls with the highest scores go on top.

It is impossible to have a bid list, therefore, until pref.

Your understanding is completely wrong.

This isn't totally true. The houses learn about the girls going through and begin to form ideas, but they won't truly have a bid list established until the end of the week.