Switching to Fall Formal Recruitment

This year my school decided to change our recruitment up a little bit. In previous years we had spring formal recruitment or deferred recruitment. This meant that students with less than 12 hours could not go through any form of recruitment formal or informal until their second semester of college. This gave students a chance to get themselves situated on campus for an entire semester and make friends outside and inside of Greek life before they decided to join.

Don't you love fall? Photo found here.

The decision to switch to a different time of recruitment was based on a lot of factors. Numbers played a role because ultimately people were very excited to join in the fall and so it's important to catch those people before they decided not to join. By switching to fall formal recruitment we gained about 100+ potential new members at the start of formal recruitment from the numbers we had the previous spring. This made all the classes of new members much larger than they would have been if we had done spring formal recruitment.

It wasn't an easy switch though. There were many questions that came along with it such as grade point averages, the size of the classes, and the switch in general. It wasn't easy financially because of the fact that we had to prepare for back to back formal recruitments. It wasn't easy mentally because that is a lot to go through for a class that has just been initiated a few months back, or for the classes that had to go through two formal recruitments on the sorority side in a row.

Ultimately it was well worth it in the end. Was it difficult/nerve-wracking/hard to deal with? Yes. Was it amazing/lovely/earth-shakingly great? Yes. As organizations we have to be willing to move and shake with the times. It was definitely a hard thing to deal with, but in the end I wouldn't trade the experience for anything in the world.

Photo credit to my lovely sister, Christina H.

Finally, my advice to you if your school is planning to switch to formal recruitment in the fall: go for it. It can seem daunting or nerve-wracking but it is honestly such a great experience. The transition is going to be an icky time period but the ends will justify the means in this situation!