What Should You Expect From COB?
If you are a new student here at the University of Kentucky or you are someone who is interested in greek life but missed the deadline to apply for primary recruitment then COB might be for you. As someone who went through primary recruitment, I am not going to lie to you and tell you it was a joyous formal process. Until Bid Day, that is. I am here to tell you what to expect from COB.
What does COB mean? Well, it means Continuous Open Bidding. If you go through the COB process, it does not mean you are any better or worse than a normal girl who went through primary recruitment. It can mean that you did not like the formal process, you have other important events going on the two weekends of recruitment, or you simply want a laid back and relaxed way of going through a sorority process. Which if any of these reasons apply to you then COB might be the right thing to do.
First, I am going to start off and tell you, not every sorority does COB. If you have a sorority in mind but do not want to go through primary recruitment and think they might do COB, you might be getting your hopes up. COB is an option for sororities to take part in, but not all do. Sometimes sororities take part in COB for not meeting quota or they want to expand their chapter by adding new members.
Second, this is a less formal process than primary recruitment. This is a laid back day or evening of meeting the girls in the sorority. Personally speaking, my sorority did a game night and invited the girls who were going through this process to the student center to play games in order to get to know the girls who were rushing. Due to the laid back environment of this process, you will be able to have a better one on one time with the recruiter. However, on the downside of this, you may not get to experience what girls who went through primary recruitment experience. But this okay, if you truly found your home within your sorority, there is nothing that can beat that.
Lastly, the best thing you can expect from COB is every person is going to be themselves. This may sound like a cliche, but I promise it is not. When you are one-on-one with a person being yourself, you can see if you fit inside that chapter or not. Plus, there is not a lot of pressure stress around getting to know someone in thirty minutes, which I had to do during my first round of open house. This round is less stressful and you have more time to be yourself. From there you can tell right away if it is a fit, if not then you press on and go about your journey through the COB process.
