My Sorority Story: Dealing with Rejection During Recruitment

As a first generation Panhellenic sorority hopeful who decided to go through recruitment super late in the semester I was at an extreme disadvantage. I had one sorority I was really looking into but before I could scream hip hip horray at bid day I had to get through three days of recruitment. To say I was nervous would be an understatement.

I had no idea what to expect during recruitment. My Pi Chi was helpful as she walked all of us through the days. We had Spring Formal Recruitment though so that meant that a lot of people had a whole semester to get to know sorority women, while I only had two friends who were Greek.

I had stumbled through my first day in a shamble of nervousness and I had inadvertently shut out a lot of the sororities with my conversation and nerves as I opened my schedule for the second day to see the only sorority that had invited me back was the sorority I'd made the friends in to begin with.

Although my heart belonged to that sorority I was still upset. I felt a pang of hurt in my stomach and I almost started to cry. I remember that day very well. It wasn't a bad thing--I still had my top choice, but it was hard to understand why I didn't get invited back to the other four houses on campus.

My first bid day!

In the end it's about picking up the pieces and moving on. It's okay to cry a bit, but don't go into a mass hysteria. Don't spend your entire recruitment wondering about what could have, should have, or would have been. In recruitment all you have is the present, the current schedule, the women who invited you back.

If you are rejected during recruitment I have two pieces of advice for you:

1. Continue On: Even if you decide to not sign a bid card at the end of recruitment, continue on with any sorority who invites you back until you have no more parties to go to. They invited you back for a reason so you should always hear what they have to say.

2. You Are Not Alone: Even if it seems like you are the only one who got rejected during recruitment, you aren't. Part of recruitment is the narrowing down of houses until you find your perfect house. If your list didn't get shorter and shorter with every day recruitment wouldn't work. No one has a perfect recruitment, not even the sorority women have perfect recruitments.

Sorority women get rejected as much if not more than the actual potential new members themselves. As a person who has been on both sides of recruitment I know how devastating it can be to a sorority woman when her recruitment crush doesn't come back into the room--we notice too.

Everyone gets that feeling of rejection, it's what you do after you get that feeling that matters.