Glossary of Terms

Below is a glossary of terms that are related to the Panhellenic recruitment process.

    • PNM: Potential New Member

    • RC: Recruitment Counselor

    • Bid: An official offer from a sorority to become a new member.

    • PSR: Panhellenic Sorority Recruitment which occurs every fall over three days and leads to chapters offering bids to PNMs.

    • COB: Continuous Open Bidding, this occurs if a chapter does not reach total.

    • Recruitment Parties: Each day of FMR is broken into parties (6, 4, 2 respectively).

    • New Member: The status of a sorority girl between accepting a bid and being initiated.

    • New Member Period: The time between accepting a bid and becoming initiated.

    • Total: The amount of members a chapter must have in order to be considered “full”, otherwise they may participate in COB; currently determined based upon max.

    • Max: The maximum number of all members throughout each chapter.

    • Quota: The number of potential new members each NPC women’s fraternity may offer membership on a campus during a recruitment.

    • Snap Bidding: An option available to chapters that did not fill quota during bid matching. Chapters may offer bids to potential new members whose preferences were not matched and who attended at least one party of formal recruitment. This process takes place before bids are distributed. Snap bidding is not intended to fill spaces in the chapter total and is limited to any woman who participated in the designated recruitment. Snap bidding ends once Bid Day activities have begun.

    • Values Based Recruitment: Sororities at Carnegie Mellon participate in recruitment based on personal and chapter values to help them determine which chapter they belong in.