Following a month of activities including open houses, section parties and interviews, Duke's 10 selective housing groups extended bids to 170 hopeful rushees earlier this month.
Most of the bids offered were accepted by their recipients, with many houses seeing 100-percent acceptance rates.
Senior David Lee, president of the Selective House Council, partially attributed the success of rush this year to a new coordinated recruitment effort by all groups within the council.
"The one thing we did to help coordinate rush this year was have a Selective House Council rush information session." he said. "It was a big success."
Each group subsequently pursued independent rush schedules, Lee said.
Like members of the Interfraternity Council, selective houses vary greatly in size-a fact reflected in differences among accepted bid numbers, which ranged from 10 for Prism to 28 for Wayne Manor.
Members of SHARE, a selective house directed toward academic and residential experimentation, said they considered their rush outcome successful, despite bringing in fewer than 20 new members.
"Our rush events could have been better attended, but the end result is still wonderful," junior Deborah Aronin, president of SHARE, wrote in an e-mail. "Not many people have even heard of SHARE, and those who have assume we're all Marxist sex addicts on drugs."
Round Table, a selective house aiming to foster relationships between students, faculty and the community, encountered the unexpected dilemma of having to bring in a small rush class because of an excess of upperclassmen, said Round Table Rush Chair Varun Lella, a junior.
"We have 10 officially," said Lella, who is also the content editor for recess. "It's a huge drop because the amount of people wanting to stay in section has increased greatly."
Although Round Table and other large selective houses generally do not have trouble filling beds, other residential student groups, both greek and non-greek, have difficulty meeting the minimum membership requirements.
"We have three groups that currently do not meet the requirement of 16 members in section, which they must have to be granted space," said Joe Gonzalez, associate dean for residence life.
He added that only one of the groups is non-greek, but declined to name the group until the group is notified.
Despite the failure of one selective house to meet the membership requirement, Lee said that this year's numbers have been consistent with the performance of selective houses in previous years.
"Overall, it seems like rush has been very successful," he said.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.