This year's fraternity pledge class is projected to be the largest in at least six years, while the number of new sorority members has remained relatively unchanged.
About 400 men signed fraternity bids last night. Men still have until noon on Friday to sign bids; Inter-Fraternity Council leaders expect about 50 more to join in.
Last year's fraternity pledge class had 381 members, meaning this year, the number has increased by about 18 percent.
Although 480 women participated in sorority rush this year -- an 11 percent increase from last year -- the number receiving bids stayed about the same, with 325 women offered bids Thursday night.
Last year, about 320 women received bids.
Sorority recruitment went "incredibly well," outgoing Panhellenic President and College senior Hayley Gross said. "Having online registration was an incredible plus. ... I've heard nothing but the most positive feedback."
Outgoing Interfraternity Council President and College senior Spencer Scharff said he was excited about the increase in recruitment this year and saw it as representing the beginning of a trend.
"I would like to attribute [the increase] to our push towards reaching out toward a broader range of students," he said.
This year, 554 bids to Penn's 29 InterFraternity Council chapters were offered. Only 473 men received bids because there were 64 multiple bids, a practice allowed for fraternities but not sororities.
The number of bids issued by fraternities has remained above 500 for the past six years -- with the exception of 2004, when 481 bids were offered. About 400 men have accepted bids each year.
The average fraternity pledge class size is 19.
Penn's eight Panhellenic Council sorority houses offered about 44 bids each Thursday night. About 320 of the 325 were accepted.
Of the about 350 women who remained in the rush process until the final round, 93 percent received bids. Bids are determined through a mutually selective process performed through the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs computer system.
Although outgoing Vice President of Panhellenic Recruitment and Wharton senior Kelly Rytel said the vast majority of women who dropped out of rush did so before the completion of the first round, several women dropped out during the finals stages.
Engineering freshman Shana Hoffman dropped out before the final round.
"I really just wanted to participate in rush ... to meet a lot of people," Hoffmann said, "It was really good the first few days [but] after that it got really stressful. ... A lot of girls got upset about the process."
Panhellenic adviser Stacy Kraus said that though she is "definitely happy with the numbers," she plans to conduct a follow-up survey to determine the reasoning behind women's decisions to either complete or leave the rush process.
College and Wharton freshman Mark Saadine participated in fraternity rush but decided not to pledge because he thought it might interfere with his six courses.
"The rush process was a good time ... to come back to second semester and have something to do other than study," Saadine said. "But I had to make a decision."
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