Frequently Asked Questions From Bama Rush Tok Answered

The short answer: Recruitment is usually a week, but it’s LONG and exhausting. 

If you want the long answer, buckle up, because the week of rush is quite the ride. Before we dive in, I should note that every college might do this a little differently or have different names for each day, but the overall breakdown is always the same. There are four rounds of recruitment, with some rounds split over several days to make up one week of events.

The first round is usually called something like Open House, Greek Day, Ice Water Teas, or Water Parties. You visit every single house during this round. Some schools do this over two days, while others make you visit them all in a whirlwind (I’d recommend taking notes because they all kind of blend together by the end of the day!). Because of the pandemic, a lot of schools have made this round virtual, meaning you watch videos made by each chapter so you can get a feel for what each house is like. I’m honestly so jealous of this change.

Once you’ve made it past the daunting first day, we’re onto round two: philanthropy. Depending on how many chapters your school has, you can get invited back to a certain number of houses, based on how you ranked the houses and how many women going through rush each chapter had to cut. This is based on a formula called release figures methodology (normally known as RFM), which can get kind of complicated. When I went through recruitment, we had 10 chapters and could go back to a maximum of seven houses during this round. Every sorority has a philanthropy that they support, so you’ll learn all about each chapter’s cause of choice during this round.

You usually get a break day at the halfway point of rush, and girl, you’re gonna need it! Rush really depletes, dehydrates, and destroys you, all in the name of #sisterhood.

Things start to get a little more serious by round three, which is called Sisterhood. This is when you start to gain some clarity into which chapter you might join, as the conversations are supposed to start getting a little deeper than surface level. When I went through recruitment, this round was called Skit, and each chapter was responsible for performing what I can only describe as an amateur version of Saturday Night Live, complete with costumes and choreography. By the time I became an active member, the skit premise had been retired, and instead, sororities attempted to dazzle potential new members by changing the lyrics to popular songs to reflect their chapter and their values. I believe the singing has now been removed entirely from rush in order to put a stronger focus on the conversations, so as someone who suffered through countless rush practices that sounded like the Hollywood round on American Idol, I can’t say I’m sad to see the singing go.

We’re in the home stretch now! The final round is called Preference, and you can be invited back to a maximum of two houses, where y’all will just heap the love on one another. Here’s your chance to convince the chapter of your dreams that you love them and can’t imagine your college experience without being a member. In return, they’ll get equally serious and demonstrate why they think you’ll be an amazing member. If you’re not a fan of the singing and screaming side of recruitment, then you’ll probably love this round, because the most important aspect of it is that all of the glitter and dancing gets totally stripped away.

One sleep later and it’s BID DAY! We’ll unpack the chaos known as Bid Day a little later.