The Best #Rush Strategy Money Can Buy

Whether your school is all about Greek life or you just follow the #RushTok drama and endless OOTDs on TikTok, the rush process, in which sororities meet incoming freshmen to select their next class of members, is hard to miss this time of year. But according to Stacia Damron, founder of the sorority rush coaching advisory Hiking in Heels, rush begins in February — earlier if you’re really in it to win it. “Girls and moms [who] seek us out are more on top of preparation,” says Damron, whose company is based in Austin but advises students on over 70 campuses.

Damron, a University of Texas graduate who was in a sorority but won’t say which one — “We don’t share that with media outlets” — was excited to give Elite Daily a strategist’s view of recruitment, and what makes the difference between getting into your preferred house and getting cut.

To ask a basic question, why do people want to be in sororities now?

It’s girls’ first time to move away from home, for the majority of them. A very big goal, if not the biggest goal, after getting into college is to join a sorority and get connected on campus and kind of find a group, find your people, which I think is a very human thing.

Who are your clients?

It’s a bunch of moms and daughters. Usually the moms are working with their daughters pretty closely to help them get ready. Maybe the moms were over recruitment at that school or on the executive team of the sorority back in the day, but the process has changed so much since then, they want to give their daughter as much support as possible.

And then half of our families don’t know anything. They’re starting from scratch, just learn[ing] how the process works, and don’t have a ton of alumni connections.

If you aren’t prepared, it’s swift cuts.

The schools we have the most families [from] are University of Texas, Ole Miss, Bama, Arkansas, Georgia. We have a lot of SMU students, a lot of A&M students, a lot of [Texas] Tech, TCU. So Southern schools with more competitive recruitment processes and also some schools on the West Coast as well.

What do you wish people knew about the recruitment process?

Recruitment on the sorority side begins earlier and earlier every year. In the past, we would have the majority of our girls sign up in February, March, April to get ready for fall recruitment. This year, we [had] people signing up a full year in advance, before they’d even fully nailed down their college. Maybe they had it down to their top three.

To have a successful recruitment process, it’s really all about getting on the sororities’ radar and getting that visibility months ahead of formal recruitment. If you submit your stuff later, and they don’t know about you, that’s when girls tend to fall through the cracks.

Why the… rush?

Recruitment teams consist of maybe four to six officers that are processing 2,000-plus incoming girls and trying to get the best new member class for their sorority and compete with the others.

In order for those five people to deal with those numbers, they can’t start when recruitment begins in August. They would already be too far behind. It’d be chaos.

They start months before. Each chapter makes a wish list of about 200 girls that they are going to focus on during recruitment. They host an internal meeting and say, “See if any of your friends or family members from back home have committed to our school and plan to rush. Let’s get them on our list so we can begin learning a little bit more about them.” They also add people to this list through alumni.

So each house is rejecting 1,800 people?

Every single year, it gets more and more competitive to get into these houses. You read about it, you hear about it, and then you get there, and if you aren’t prepared, it’s swift cuts.

How has #BamaRush “Season 1” affected the 2022 process?

This year, the Alabama recruitment meetings started in January instead of February like they had in years past, because of how everything went viral on RushTok [in 2021].

[Rush] used to be this mysterious, behind-the-curtain [process]. No one really knew how it worked. But with people detailing their experience on TikTok or through Instagram, the girls were able to learn a little bit more and think, “Oh, my goodness, I need to be starting on this now.”

I think that’s great because more people can go online and follow #RushTok and learn what they need to be doing to have a successful process. It ends up becoming more accessible for everyone.

Is it that accessible? The PNMs (potential new members) on #RushTok, at least, seem to be a pretty homogenous group.

It’s become more inclusive. Over the past couple years, most if not all the houses have gotten rid of their legacy policies. So that’s a big thing that’s being discussed right now.

In the past if you had a sister, a mother, or a grandmother that was a member of any chapter, that would make you a legacy. As a legacy, a potential new member would get special privileges during the recruitment process. Houses were obligated to invite legacies back for a courtesy invite from Round 1 to Round 2. If you were there the last round of recruitment, a sorority was unable to cut you. Sororities were obligated to give legacies that were still there on that round a bid.

It certainly never hurts to be cute.

Now all that is gone. Over these past two to three years, sororities for the most part have gotten rid of their legacy policies, so everyone’s going through on equal footing, whether you are a legacy or a nonlegacy.

I imagine some legacies have not been thrilled about that.

I always remind my moms that yes, your daughter might have gotten a courtesy invite at one particular house [before], but now all those spots [other houses] would’ve had to give other [legacy] girls just opened up. So the houses have more freedom to pick based on the merit of resumes and based on what they’re looking for in girls versus having to follow a policy that was made years and years and years ago, that might or might not have guided them toward the girls that they wanted. I think as a whole, it’s a good thing. It means it makes it easier for everybody to have a fair shot.

To what degree is conventional hotness still a factor in recruitment?

Well, it certainly never hurts to be cute. I think that is out there. It helps to put your best foot forward in your photos you’re submitting, in the way you carry yourself at these rounds and parties you’re going through.

But if you’re not a size 0 blond Instagram model, do you still have a chance? Yes, absolutely. All of these houses are looking for great girls that are going to get involved, that want to succeed academically, want to volunteer, and are also excited about making a bunch of new friends.

One thing that a lot of people don’t know is you’re only allowed to vote on a girl if you’ve personally met her. This can be in high school, it could be through club volleyball, it could be through recruitment week itself. A member can’t just vote on her based on looks. They have to have spoken with that girl, gotten to know her, in order to make sure [they’re] being fair and unbiased.

Is it harder for students who are on scholarship or financial aid to compete? What if you can’t afford the dues, the fees, the wardrobe?

You don’t have to have all designer stuff or anything like that. You can look just as adorable in something that is not designer.

In terms of girls with financial [aid], the sorority views recruitment as an investment. We see some people going through with scholarships say, “This is something that’s a priority to me. I want to do this for my college experience,” and absolutely make it happen.

But I would say if someone is going through on full scholarship and plans on working the entire time they’re in college, recruitment might not be something that they’re seeking out.

Besides a resume and letters of recommendation, what are sororities looking at when considering a PNM?

Before you can even complete the [rush registration] form, you might have four to six short answer questions, 250 words or less. The majority of competitive schools are also requiring a 60- to 90-second video where you answer one of eight prompts and then record that and turn it in as part of the registration process. And that’s really just the first half of things you need to work on.

We do interview coaching because the girls are being graded and scored as they go through the formal recruitment process. So making sure that they can speak to the points that they’re being asked about, making sure that they can convey the accomplishments on their resume. What happens when they ask you something that you’re not supposed to talk about, like partying or alcohol? Instead of just saying, “No, don’t talk about it,” we coach them on what to say when it comes up.

For some families, it’s the first time they’ve ever experienced disappointment.

Of course, we do outfit consulting, but our program is very focused on how the process works. How will you be ranking the houses? How will the houses be ranking you? What is the structure of the day? What is expected of this, this, and this day in terms of the topics of conversation and the questions they’ll ask you? And then of course, we also look at the girls’ social media and identify opportunities to find and get on the radar of some of these recruitment teams beforehand. Tangible strategies to get yourself noticed without breaking any etiquette rules of rush.

Let’s talk about rush week itself, or formal recruitment. Is a rush coach’s work done by that point, or can you still affect outcomes up until bid day?

We provide on-call services for a smaller subset of families the week of recruitment. A coach is there to discuss anything that could come up last minute, whether that’s some girl in the house reaching out to asking the [client] what they thought of that particular event or another house, or whether that’s a chapter adviser reaching out to that girl’s mom and saying, “Oh, we’ve heard great things about her; what is she thinking about this house?” We [share] with her mom, “Well, if you answered it these different ways, this is probably what’s going to happen.”

How do your clients react when they get cut?

For some families, it’s the first time they’ve ever experienced disappointment. They have made it through high school, they’ve gotten into a school of their dreams. They haven’t ever experienced failure on a larger, more impactful level. [If] for some reason they don’t get a house, it feels very personal. You went in, and all these girls told you how excited they were to meet you, and then the next day on your list, there was nothing there. That hurts.

And then they struggle with finding their place and their friends on campus, especially when all the friends they made during the recruitment process end up going Greek.

It’s very much what we want to combat. We want everyone to be a part of this thing that we all had such positive experiences in.

What’s your least favorite part of rush?

We get a lot of calls the week of from people that we weren’t working with asking, “My daughter’s cut from everything. What can you do?” At that point, there’s nothing we can do. It’s all about the long game.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.