retention rate

Low retention rates mean that the house struggles with keeping all girls they've extended bids to. So say last year, 160 girls accepted bids from ABC house. Over the course of the year, the amount of girls in that pledge class drops to 130. Doing the math, 30 girls dropped over the course of the year in just that one pledge class. So the higher the amount of drops, the lower the retention rate. This is alarming for sororities because if there are lots of girls dropping then it makes it harder to fund various things since there are less girls to pay dues.

However, don't get it mixed up. Some people will look at the total member numbers in the beginning of the year and at the end of the year and assume that ABC house had 30 total "drops" and blame it on sisterhood or drama or whatever. But they fail to realize that:
1. Not everyone is cut out for sorority life. Some girls have set their hearts of going Greek for years and when they finally rush they realize it's not what they expected so instead of wasting 4k a semester they drop.
2. Girls transfer. It's extremely common (especially for OOS girls) to come to Bama and either realize they don't like being so far from home or they fail out and so they transfer.
3. Girls graduate early which is why you can't look at the grade report and say ABC house had 30 girls drop solely because of the a bad sisterhood when in reality, 15 of those girls probably graduated early in December.

Retention = how many people stay with something until the end. Most houses have roughly the same retention rate as the university itself (about 85% staying for sophomore year and 70% graduating) but some have slightly more. New row houses tend to have lower retention rates because they have more girls from OOS who realize the culture of UA isn't for them or they just decide to be closer to home.

Sometimes houses also have a spike of girls drop because they are unhappy with the house's sisterhood or they don't think the house is worth the money, but be weary of people who try to tell you specific houses face this issue during recruitment!!! There are girls in EVERY house from AXO to ZTA who drop for a WIDE variety of reasons. It is usually financial rather than personal!