Rush for Sale: The Business of Sorority Consulting

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[music] Ten girls stand in a line outside of a house. They're wearing dresses, mostly florals, and pastel. [music] If you saw it from the street, you'd probably assume it was sorority recruitment, but it's not. This is just practice for the real thing. The event is being put on by Trisha Addix. She's the founder of a company called It's All Greek To Me, and her job is kind of fascinating.

She's what's called a sorority rush consultant, which means she helps girls across the country get into sororities.

“One of the reasons people hire her is this event, which she calls a mock round to frost.”

That mock round is very well attended. It's very highly sought after, because we are the only company that does this, and we do it really well. I live in Atlanta, but I have people flying from all over. Last year, one girl flew five hours from Seattle just to participate in an hour and a half mock round to frost. Trisha says the appeal is how realistic it feels.

First off, we make them stand outside on the sidewalk in the heat, because that's a big part of being able to present yourself when you're dripping sweat and hot.

So we do it in July or August here. It's really crowded, chaotic, and it's put on by people who are currently in sororities, so they know exactly what this looks like. Just like they would in real rush, the girls file into Trisha's house one by one. They have conversations, lots of small talk, and afterwards, Trisha gives them real-time feedback on everything. They're outfits, they're conversational skills, even their facial expressions. It's really important to know how you appear. I'm not talking about what outfit you're wearing.

“It's how your face looks. Are you open? Are you listening? Are you engaged?”

I imagine some of you are probably rolling your eyes right now, but Trisha's business is booming. I think that it was a surprise people that we have clients from all over from New York to California to Midwest to the South. It's all backgrounds, but they just all have that one common desire to find their people and they want to put in the work to do it. Trisha's not alone in this business, not even close. Sorority recruitment coaching is an entire industry now, and it just keeps growing.

I'm Marco Gray. Today on campus files, the business of sorority recruitment consultant. Sororities have been around since the mid-1800s. Back then, they weren't called sororities. They were called women's fraternities. They borrowed traditions from men's fraternities, the Greek letters, the rituals, all of it designed to signal a certain kind of prestige. But over time, they got their own name, sororities, and developed their own identity and traditions. One of those traditions is recruitment, or is most people call it, Rush.

Today, it's pretty standardized. At most schools, it plays out over the course of about a week. I went through it in college, and I have a pretty vivid memory of it. It's kind of like a job interview, only the people across from you or girls around your age you really want to like you. On day one, you walk into a room filled with chanting girls. You're probably sweating from nerves, from the heat, sometimes from the fact that there's no air conditioning. You make small talk, you smile a lot, and then after about half an hour, you leave, and walk straight to the next sorority to do it all over again.

At the end of the day, you rank the sororities you liked best. They do the same with the women they met.

Each round, your options narrow, based on mutual interest. Getting cut from a sorority is never fun. Inevitably, there are girls crying quietly in bathroom stalls. It's intense.

Professional coaches who help girls navigate all the dues and don'ts of the Rush process.

Here's sorority Rush consultant, Trisha Addix. Think of it sort of as you would like a job interview. You wouldn't just show up and chat with someone to get a job.

“You would think about how you presented yourself. You would want to have a great resume, all of the things that on the back end are what's really important in Rush.”

A lot of girls think like I was a homecoming queen. I was student body president. I was captain of the soccer team or I volunteered here and think like I don't have to try as hard. This is sorority Rush consultant, Lori Stephanie. And it's like, okay, we'll take a number because there's like 2,700 girls going through recruitment. So the math right there is going to tell you right there. It's fairly competitive. Back in 2013, Lori started a sorority consulting company called Greek Sheek. She was working in HR before that, but on the side, she was regularly helping her friend's daughters going through this sorority recruitment process.

After a while, her husband convinced her it could be a real business and Lori loved the idea. Her own sorority experience had meant a lot to her and she was excited to help other girls find something just as meaningful. I went to a very large public high school in Texas and it was kind of clicky and I was a little bit of a tri-har, like I always wanted to be accepted. And when I got to college, I've never had so many girls love and appreciate me, like just for who I was.

“And I'm still friends with a ton of my sorority sisters to this day, like we talk, we text, we visit, we have girls weekends, you know, like we're in each other's weddings and things like that.”

So as cheesy and tried as that might sound, it is an experience that I will never take for granted.

Trisha is also driven by personal experience. Back as a freshman at the University of Georgia, she was really excited to join a sorority. But she went into recruitment completely unprepared and it didn't go the way she'd hoped on bid day. The day everyone finds out which sorority they've been invited to join. So everybody else pulled out their bid card and I had an empty envelope. And my rush counselor, I looked at her and I was like, "What?" And she just shook her head and she was like, "Yeah, you didn't get a bid."

So I found an empty dorm room, cried my eyes out, it was mortified, and everybody else was screaming running around.

“It was a trauma and I know that that might seem like a joke or an exaggeration or whatever.”

But it really was because it wasn't just about not being a sorority, it was that feeling of rejection, that feeling of nobody wants you. That stayed with me. It has stayed with me for my whole life. Trisha doesn't want any of her clients to experience that feeling. Her business, it's all Greek to me, started similarly to Loris. She was originally getting clients by word of mouth and doing everything on her own. But it was hard to keep up with the workload, especially with clients spread across different schools, each with their own rush weeks.

So this was like an eight week period that I was zero sleep. Like I wouldn't go to the bedroom and I would be on the phone all night. I wasn't getting any sleep. Trisha started bringing on additional employees to help manage the workload, but demand kept growing.

The first major spike came in 2021 when Rush Talk took over TikTok.

That's when freshmen at the University of Alabama began posting videos about their experience going through sorority recruitment. Good morning, y'all. Wake up. Today's day before 1 of Alabama Rush, and I am so excited. I hope you're having a great day. Not just trying to be Saturday, the first day of Rush. This is my outfit. The videos started going viral. People across the country were stunned by the lavish sorority houses, the designer outfits, the over-the-top choreographed dance routines. Trisha saw a spike in applicants, but nothing compared to 2023. That's when the documentary Bama Rush premiered.

We're getting ready to rush, and go look at all the people already starting to line up. The University of Alabama is the top sorority recruitment in all the country. Rush consists of four highly competitive rounds. Let's be honest, I probably would not be going to Alabama if it didn't upload on TikTok. Bama Rush takes viewers behind the scenes of sorority recruitment at the University of Alabama.

What had once been a relatively private campus process was suddenly public. And that visibility extended beyond the sororities to the sorority consultants themselves. Both Trisha and Lori were interviewed for the documentary.

The University of Alabama is the top sorority recruitment in all the country.

“It's a huge school with tons of money rolling into it for the football program.”

The girls are like, "Glam to the gods." It sucks you in. After the documentary came out, Lori was inundated with new clients. And she saw a surgeon one type of client in particular. Girls from the East Coast, the Midwest and the West Coast, hoping to attend school in the south. I was sitting on a panel, and there were so many girls from Greenwich Connecticut who were going down south.

Like Tennessee, Ole Miss, Auburn, Clemson, Texas, and I was like kind of taking it back. How full the room was at these girls. I got the chance to talk to one of Lori's East Coast clients. Her name is Brooke. So I grew up about an hour outside of Boston, Massachusetts, and a small town, no connection to the south at all.

Growing up, Brooke had never even considered the University of Alabama.

Her older sister went to Boston College just to short-drive from home. But then, Bama Rush came out, and suddenly her TikTok was flooded with videos. They reminded her of the beauty pageants she competed in. Just seeing TikTok's a huge pageant pretty much at the end of the day, interviewing with all these girls. Going in different houses, seeing which one, overall you can pretty much win, is kind of how I like to look at Bama Rush.

Brooke ended up applying to the University of Alabama. When she got in, she knew one thing for sure. She wanted to be part of Greek life. The idea of having a group of sorority sisters really spoke to her. I've always wanted that kind of relationship, like I'm the youngest child, so having like a younger sister in theory super exciting to me.

But then also having an older sister mentor on campus was super important, coming from being so many miles away.

“Getting into a sorority wasn't going to be easy, at least that's what Brooke had seen on TikTok.”

And if she were going to compete, she wanted to be prepared. My mom and I really started digging very fresh stuff, and one of us all about, outfits, how to prep it, everything like that, and one of the things we found was people use sorority consultants.

I never knew anyone who had one personally.

Brooke and her mom went down a rabbit hole, looking into all kinds of recruitment consultants. But one company stood out, Lori's company, Greek chic. What really sold them was the fact that Lori actually travels to Alabama during Rush Week to support her clients. I could go and see her during the week if I needed to, and that was the key factor for my mom because she couldn't be here. So she was like, okay, she could have a second mom.

Of course, all of this costs money. At Lori's company, packages range from $1,500 to $3,000. The pricey's package includes 24/7 on call support throughout recruitment week. I think for us, it was just who we're going all in, we're going to get the highest package and just roll with it. We'll be worthwhile for the result, too, won't at that end of November Rush.

But hiring a consultant is only the first step. After that, the real work starts. But what I want to do is not to do the whole studio. The semester-by-tag left her kitchen soft behind the internet. It's like a master's real-time.

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At most schools across the country, sorority recruitment begins at the start of the fall semester. But the preparation often begins a lot earlier than that.

As soon as they know where they're going to college. One of the first things she has her clients do is create a social resume, which is exactly what it sounds like. Instead of a list of your previous employers, it's a list of all the social things you're involved with. Brooke made one of these.

“"I put hobbies. I think I'd mind I had like Pilates, like podcasts and thusias and then something else."”

When Lori works with girls who've never lived in the South, there can be a cultural divide to navigate.

So I would say previous to Alabama, I had no connections to the South at all. My grandfather moved to North Carolina when I was younger, but never visited him. So really came in with no idea of what to expect other than just seeing TikToks, TV shows, everything like that. Part of the reason that Brooke had chosen to work with Greek chic was that Lori lived on the East Coast. She'd worked with a lot of young women from the Northeast to her hoping to join Greek life in the South.

"I'm able to kind of translate for them. A little bit about like, hey, I know like you're cool girl in the city. And all that, but like you got to tone that down and be cute girl instead. I know that you went to like a beautiful, wonderful private school in New York City or boarding school somewhere in Connecticut. But that's not going to translate in the South. "I'm curious with some of the big misunderstandings or the girls from the East Coast tend to have about southern Russia culture."

"I feel like kids on the East Coast, it's a little bit of like this quiet luxury status aura that they have around them.

“All of their Instagrams are private and I'm like you have to make that public.”

And they get very touchy about that, especially the parents. And I'm like, this is a vibe check for your daughter and she needs to make it public so that the sororities can see her. I had a time before she steps foot onto campus. And they kind of push back on that a little bit because they don't understand the why around it, the ask around it. So it's a little difficult sometimes.

But whether you're from New England or Mississippi, Lori and the other consultant I spoke to, Trisha both emphasized the importance of social media.

Once an application is submitted, it's usually the first things sororities will look at.

Trisha tells girls to delete any photos in bikinis. Same goes for any photos involving alcohol. Here's Trisha. My rule of thumb is the number of pictures by yourself or with a boyfriend cannot exceed the number of pictures of you with your family and friends because you want to look like a girl score. You want to look like someone who is open to friendships.

So if you just post a bunch of thirsty photos of yourself and/or with your boyfriend, that's not the image you want to project.

“If all of this is sounding a little shallow and vapid to you, Lori says basically this is how you should think about it.”

It's a game. At the end of the day, like sorry recruitment is a game and if you want to play, you've got to play by the rules. Speaking of rules, dress code is a big one. Rush isn't just one of it. It stretches across several days and multiple rounds.

Each round has a different theme and a different dress code. One day is all about sisterhood, another focuses on philanthropy. Some days call for sunglasses, other days cocktail dresses. So my skirt and top is from whiskey active. It's the light like to scallops set.

And then my shoes are from hook up. My earrings are from Gucci and like Kevin. My bracelets are Louis Vuitton. Christian Dior and like Tom. Sorty consultants give brand recommendations, styling tips and nothing gets worn without their sign-off.

We do an out for the plan for every single round with backups because it's really important to kind of send of yourself before we start this and running around trying to figure out what you're wearing is going to distract from that. And then same thing with hair and makeup. How long it's going to take you to get ready and when you're going to get ready and all of that is all part of it. Lori had lists that she'd put together for the different rounds of brush for what she kind of suggested or things she would absolutely love for people to wear during rush.

And then it was also very important to have like personal style. So funny things that you like them kind of match that mood and then texting her or showing her and calls and just be on board with everything. It was kind of total freedom, but then also you had something to go off of at the same time. I try to work with them as best as I can just to kind of have them feel confident in what they're wearing. Every girl's different style, body shape, height, even like I'm only five foot.

So like when I have girls that are like I'm five eight or five ten I'm like, okay, maybe this short little dress won't work for you.

But I always have like a really positive spin on it instead of like, hey, you look crappy in that and it sucks.

I would say, oh my gosh, I saw you wearing this blue dress on your Instagram the other day and it that is such a beautiful color on you.

Let's go with a blue and that shade, like I think that would work perfect for you.

“You're probably getting the sense that image is very important to the whole process and you're right, but it's not the only thing.”

Rush is essentially one long round of speed dating. So conversational skills are very important. And the goal isn't to memorize talking points. It's to build these conversational skills. If you practice specific questions and then you're not asked those specific questions or anything like that, then you're a deer and headlights.

So it's very much random like, okay, what's your favorite thing to do when you're at the beach or whatever anything. Just so that they don't have a practice answer. The amount of conversation prep depends on the client. For girls who struggle the most, Trisha estimates they practice anywhere from one to two hours a day for the four months leading up to Rush.

Thankfully for Brooke, conversation has always been a strong suit, so this part didn't take nearly as much work.

By the time her recruitment started in August of 2025, she was ready. Her resume and recommendation letters were in, her Instagram was polished, her outfits carefully planned. It was finally time for what all of this had been building toward. Rush Week. We're supposed to learn from our own mistakes that other people's errors can be instructive too,

from efforts to control the weather that went disastrously awry to the un-timey death of the Segway boss. History is a treasure trove, mishaps, and meltdowns can teach us all. I'm Tim Harvard, host of cautionary tales, the podcast that mines the greatest fiascoes of the past for their most valuable lessons. Listen to cautionary tales wherever you get your podcasts. Rush Week at the University of Alabama takes place in August, about a week before the fall semester begins.

During that time, campus feels like it's all about Rush. Sure there are other people around, athletes, band members, international students moving in early, but the overwhelming majority are there for recruitment. Lori says this spectacle can be overwhelming, especially for clients who aren't from the south. They see all these girls from the south for extremely prepared.

Like, they've been prepared since freshman year in high school, if not sooner. They've grown up in this environment. I was just meeting people who Alabama Rush and Surrey Rush in general, like that's their livelihood. It usually dates back to like mothers, grandparents, aunts, everything like that. That's what they live for. Even though work was an outsider, she said she still felt pretty confident.

I went into the week feeling very relaxed because I was so organized.

“And I think if I hadn't done that, I would have been freaking out every night.”

But even with all the preparation, the week is intense, and the days start early. I get ready pretty fast, so two hours isn't crazy. That's usually like five or two weeks I am wake up, but they're definitely girls. We can't bet four or five in a morning. Nearly 2,000 girls go through Rush at the University of Alabama each year.

Every morning, shuttle buses move them from dorms across campus to the basketball stadium, where the day begins. There was a solid group of maybe 50-75 girls outside your dorm every morning, waiting for the bus. It was like, what are girls wearing today? Maybe I should wear this tomorrow instead of this outfit.

But I would say, I felt pretty on par with everything in all the girls in what they were wearing, but I think sometimes it was reassuring because I felt super dressed up most of the days, and then I would see other girls to be like, "Okay, you get me, like, again." From the basketball arena, the girls split into groups and start going from sorority house to sorority house.

I think, honestly, the most intimidating would be waiting outside the houses, because you were a shoulder to shoulder with a group of maybe 35-45 girls waiting to go in these houses. And it's really awkward when you're just standing there for they line you up, I think, 20 minutes before.

So just standing there for 20 minutes, not saying anything. That could be really hard.

I know the first day is mostly just small talk,

“but what do you remember from your first day at the sorority house?”

You eventually joined. I knew the first day I walked in, that was the place I was meant to be, and I just got chills all from my body. And I was like, "Well, maybe it's from going from 95 degrees to air conditioning house." But no, I really just knew that was the place I was meant to be,

and every time I'd walk by, I'd be like, "Yes, that's where I'm going to end up." Just because someone likes how house doesn't mean they'll get invited back.

and the sororities rank the girls.

Then it all goes into an algorithm.

“Each sorority has a slightly different algorithm,”

which no one fully understands and sororities don't want to explain. The next morning, freshman girls get a list of the sorority houses they've been invited back to. Going into the morning, I was definitely nervous when I would get those invite lists back and be like, "Oh my gosh,

what if I don't get invited back to X, Y, and Z?" They were girls who would open that list and just full panic, full break down, and that was super hard to see. I took rush super seriously, but it wasn't going to change my life. But some girls like this is their life,

and they kind of see rush in one house, so it's their end all be all. So that was super difficult to watch. That kind of panic is common during rush week. Consultants say they get a steady stream of anxious calls.

I think a lot of girls get stuck in their heads very often,

and the biggest thing I tell them is if you continue to have these thoughts and feelings about yourself, you are not going to be able to move forward. If we could practice maybe why are you thinking like this? Okay, but do you know that for sure?

“Do you know that's what they're thinking about you?”

No, okay. Well, what was positive about the conversation that you had at that round? Emotions only intensify as the week goes on, as cuts are made, and girls aren't invited back to sorority houses. It's really important at that age to be accepted,

and especially if you're going out of state, and you're moving away from your family and your support system. And I think the reason why so many girls get so upset is nobody likes to be dumped, nobody likes to be rejected, nobody likes to be uninvited to something,

and I think that it hurts a lot of girls because they feel less than sometimes. But the freshmen girls aren't the only ones freaking out. Consultants regularly get calls from moms too. Here's Tresha.

They will put their desires on their daughter, and there are a lot of rumors. There's a lot of talking amongst moms. If someone's going to a lunch with a bunch of women, and their daughters are all going through rush,

and one of them says, "Oh, my daughter's got to buy it back to every house." She wanted, and if someone's daughter doesn't, then they're calling their daughter, "What did you do that you didn't get us back?" Sometimes Tresha ends up having to calm down and entire family.

Like this one situation, she told me about. It all started with the mom's spiraling. This is going to be terrible. She's going to get dropped from everything, but I was going to happen to that. So then the dad, who had no idea about our prep or anything,

he's like, "What is happening? My wife is spiraling. How is my daughter going to get cut out of rush?" He called me at 2 in the morning, and he's like, "I don't understand.

You have to tell me what's going on." So then I'm talking about his tree from 2 to 430 in the morning. This wasn't the only middle of the night called Tresha. He's gotten from a parent, and it wasn't even the craziest story she shared with me.

He told me about one mom who'd heard from her friend about which sororities were quote unquote the best at her daughter's school. When her daughter got dropped by several of them, the mom was not happy to say the least. The daughter was fine.

While the mother was losing her mind, and spam texting her daughter, and spam texting her mentor, she said this process just isn't for her. We're pulling her.

They pulled her out of school. She's not in college. I can't make this stuff up. Tresha told me she couldn't help herself. She went off on the mother.

It's not in my place. But I don't keep my mouth shut. When someone messes with a kid, I can't help myself. The parents' role when they have a child going through rush

is to be a support because they're under so much pressure and it's something I tell parents every day, but it's something that they should really, really, really try hard. Dig deep. Tresha doesn't have a degree in psychology,

but she says the job often feels like family therapy. The same goes for Lori. She has no shortage of stories about telling moms to calm down. My background is in human resources. I worked in human resources for over 20 years.

A mom and daughter is not going to steam roll me. So I have to be honest and real with these moms at times that your daughter got into the sorority that she was meant to be in. Brooke told me that neither she nor her mom ended up calling Lori and tears during rush week.

Still, she felt a big sense of relief when it was finally over.

Can you paint me a picture of the day

“whenever and finds out which sorority they got into?”

I know, for example, you get envelopes with the sorority names in them. So I was walking again, you're with all of these girls. It was probably about 2,000 girls. This is so exciting.

They're passing out waters at all times.

“You have to wait and listen to all the speeches before you could open your envelope”

just waiting maybe half an hour or 45 minutes. So that part is like very anxiety and do thing just waiting there with it in your hands and not being able to open it. And then you've probably seen the TikToks of like 10, 9, and just counting down. And then everyone opened their envelopes all at once, which is super exciting.

The noise shakes the stadium. So, yeah, there's nothing loud. Brooke was one of those girls screaming with excitement. When she opened her envelope,

“she saw that she'd gotten into her top choice.”

That made all the preparation worth it. Being so many miles away, not having any family here, not knowing anyone, like knowing from my who school came to Alabama. For me, it's like my home away from home. I go to the house every day.

I go with my friends every day. My roommate is in the same store already as me. So, it's really just some people who are going to be surrounded with for probably the rest of your life. It's awesome.

If you've got a story idea, we would love to hear about it.

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While you're there, leave us a review and a five-star rating. Campus Files is an Odyssey original podcast hosted by Margot Gray and Ian Mont. Our executive producers are Leah Reestannis and Lloyd Lockridge. Campus Files is produced by Ian Mont and Margot Gray. Sound design and engineering by Andy Jastquitz and Zach Clarke.

Legal support by Laura Burman and Melissa Jean. Original music by Davy Sumner. Special thanks to more current Josephina Francis, Hillary Schoff, Eric Donley, Keith Hutchison Rose, Sean Cherry, Kurt Courtney, and Lauren Viera.

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