I don't know that it would necessarily be uncomfortable, but in larger chapters of 100+ members, I think it would be hard to give a quick answer. Maybe asking about what senior members do, or special senior traditions the chapter has could work?

Maybe something along the lines of "do you do a senior sendoff? My (possibly fictional) next door neighbor who's in [insert sorority not at your school] just graduated and she was telling me what a special thing it was." If they say they don't have enough seniors for it to have a point, that would be a hint that their retention is crap. :p

But yeah...very valid question, but very potentially awkward. It also depends whether you want to know this sorority specifically or the campus in general. If it's the latter, you could ask the Greek life office.

It speaks to retention only if you know how many seniors they should have in the chapter. If you know that number you probably already know how many they have now.

If they have hardly any seniors maybe it's because three years ago they had a bad recruitment and hardly got any freshman. They could have 100% retention and still have low numbers.

Also, even if they had retention issues that led to a small senior number now, without knowing when those issues occured it won't tell you much about current retention. Maybe 2 - 3 years ago they had a loss of girls but have been smooth sailing since.

Sure, and you could also have fewer seniors if you pledged a lot of sophomores one year, instead of freshmen. Or you could have a ton of seniors who write their check and do the bare minimum just because they are so close to being done, anyway. Still interesting, and I bet you could glean the info from past grade reports at many schools.

How? Please explain.

The grade reports usually have the Total numbers for a chapter.

Grade reports at Arizona don't count members abroad, or not in school for that semester. It can be misleading if you're looking at Total. And there isn't a breakdown by class, only by Active and New Member classes. One spring it seemed like 30% of the chapter went abroad or took off a semester for an internship!

As for retention, it's tricky to attribute. One recent NM class was absolutely incredible, and about 60% of them weren't there at graduation. I did an analysis and the primary reasons were (in this order) (1) transferred to another college/university (2) graduated a year early, which is amazing to me (3) resigned their membership. The last category had five members in it out of a pledge class of *cough* (don't want to get too specific here for reasons of privacy). Let's just leave it at this: it was a very small percentage of the original new member class.

It is not unusual for a senior to have one foot in grad school or interning or working many hours in a job that will be her job after graduation. If the chapter is understanding, she will still be a member but you may not see her often. If the chapter is not understanding (in these days where one does what one must to have a future when school is finished), then you may see some good members exiting.

Good advice, for recruitment or life:

http://www.inc.com/jayson-demers/7-k...n.html#4ldqpit

This is a good one for PNMs!

Wish I had this advice thirty three years ago.

Bumping since people are going through rush now. (And for winter rush too!)