sorority membership totals

I don't know if Panhellenic has set a hard and fast cap, but KD, DDD and Chi-O were reaching 470 during the Fall 2015 recruitment and variable quota was established the next year. With the increase in University enrollment and the increased interest in sorority recruitment those numbers are going to creep back up. Variable quota can help even out the numbers but at some point new sororities will need to be chartered.

I'm not sure. The end of fall 2016 membership totals for Kappa were 429 and end of Spring 2017 were 387 which is a decrease of 52 members. That's the largest number drop and/or percentage drop (11%) of any Sorority on campus. Up until this year their retention rate was similar to the others. However they had the fourth highest GPA growth between Fall and Spring.

I know a TON of kappas graduated

It is a possibility that Kappa just had an usually high number of Seniors graduating after Fall break.

These totals should include active Seniors. The graduated Seniors will of course be dropped from the membership totals and would not be included in next semester's totals for variable quota purposes. However the beginning totals before recruitment are not officially released by Panhellenic.

So if KD had 50 Seniors graduate before Fall term, then KD's beginning semester total will be 400 and so on for the other houses, right?
Why doesn't Panhellenic release the before recruitment totals?
What is Panhellenic's ideal range for membership totals?
Sorry so many questions....

The quick answer to your question is yes, and of course there will also be students who do not return or transfer to another university.

Probably the biggest reason Panhellenic does not release (at least publicly) the beginning numbers is because they are just crazy busy during the recruitment process. Each sorority will know their own numbers and will understand what numbers they are working with.

Last year closer to 1,600 girls registered for recruitment. By the end 1,492 bids had been extended. If that number is equally divided by 11 than each sorority would bring in a pledge class of 135, which is what variable quota would be working toward. However, until that goal is achieved, variable quota will adjust each sororities quotas until equal quotas are met. So if variable quota is continued we will see reduced quotas for KD, DDD, Chi-O (they could be given quotas under 100 this year). DG, Pi Phi, Phi Mu, and AOPi will probably have quotas in the 110 to 125 range depending on their starting numbers. Then Kappa, ADPi, Theta and Alpha Phi could have quotas as high as 180.00. Of course, with increased registration those numbers could be higher. It will all depend on what each sororities beginning numbers are, how many students register for recruitment, and how many drop during the recruitment process.