\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are three important things in a mother\u2019s life<\/span>\u2014the birth of her child, her daughter\u2019s wedding day, and sorority rush,\u201d Bill Alverson, a sorority-rush coach and the star of the Lifetime show A Sorority Mom\u2019s Guide to Rush, likes to say. Lately, rush is bigger and more competitive than ever, driven by a boom in TikTok content detailing the process. Coaches like Alverson have begun offering their services to girls\u2014and their mothers\u2014desperate to get a bid from elite sororities, and these services don\u2019t come cheap.<\/p>\n It may sound insane to hire someone to train your teenage daughter to talk to other teenage girls, but sorority rush, especially in the South, is a major undertaking. Parents invest in lots of kids\u2019 activities; private coaching is now a common feature of competitive athletics. And getting their kids into the right sorority, parents believe, might help them make the kinds of connections that can get them job interviews someday. At my college, a rumor went around that one mother injured herself by falling out of a tree outside a sorority house\u2014people said she\u2019d been trying to get a peek at her daughter\u2019s performance during the final round of rush. There are unspoken rules, secret ranking systems, decades of traditions to study, and some hard and fast dos and don\u2019ts, according to Alverson: \u201cYou don\u2019t talk about bucks; you don\u2019t talk about boys; you don\u2019t talk about booze,\u201d he told me. \u201cA lot of people say don\u2019t talk about the Bible, but I don\u2019t buy in to that one.\u201d If church is important to you, he said, it\u2019s okay to say that; just remember that \u201cJesus is not going through rush.\u201d<\/p>\n Alverson hadn\u2019t planned to become a rush coach. He was a lawyer in small-town Alabama when the local choir director asked him to help a girl train for a Junior Miss pageant. Alverson had done theater in the past and worked in retail, so he thought he could help her. \u201cWell, we ended up winning,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was this underdog success story.\u201d His phone hasn\u2019t stopped ringing since. By 2015, he was known as one of the country\u2019s top pageant trainers and had his own reality show, Coach Charming. A few years ago, Alverson\u2019s pageant girls started setting out for college. One of the moms asked if he\u2019d help prep her daughter for sorority recruitment, and more and more followed.<\/p>\n He advises young women on what to wear: \u201cJust a little touch of \u2018We have this\u2019\u201d can be beneficial, he told me, about the significance of a David Yurman or Herm\u00e8s bracelet. He doesn\u2019t apologize for the materialism, which he sees as natural: Many people \u201cmake first impressions based upon how you present yourself. We know this by psychological studies.\u201d<\/p>\n But the biggest part of coaching, he said, is training the women for the conversations they\u2019ll have at rush, which essentially serve as interviews. High schoolers these days aren\u2019t accustomed to public speaking or \u201ccocktail-party conversation,\u201d he told me, and struggle to pitch themselves. So he starts by having his clients lead conversations with waiters at restaurants. He\u2019ll take the young women out shopping and have them chat with the store clerk. He reminds his clients to make sure they ask questions, and to really listen to the answers. He\u2019ll quiz them after, asking what the clerk\u2019s name was and what they discussed.<\/p>\n The most significant part is role-playing the conversations they\u2019re going to have at rush: What\u2019s your major? Why? How was your week? One important lesson is how to show the right amount of vulnerability in conversation. If someone compliments your dress, say to them, \u201cOh, thank you, I wasn\u2019t sure,\u201d or \u201cReally? My mom picked it out for me.\u201d He recommends saying, \u201cI\u2019m this major for now, but I\u2019m not sure if it\u2019s right for me.\u201d And it\u2019s always good to poke fun at your family\u2014in a playful way. The point is to convey humility, that you\u2019re not perfect.<\/p>\n Training with Alverson can cost some clients a thousand dollars or more. He typically charges by the hour, but he wouldn\u2019t tell me how much. He said he sometimes offers discounts, but \u201cto be real honest, if they don\u2019t pay, they\u2019re not committed.\u201d Alverson has had mothers approach him asking, \u201cHow many openings do you have? Four? I\u2019ll take them all.\u201d They\u2019re not just trying to get their daughters the extra training that could afford them a leg up; they\u2019re trying to box out the competition.<\/p>\n To the naysayers (usually the girls\u2019 fathers), Alverson argues that rushing a sorority is the female equivalent of joining a country club. \u201cI have them come at me about the cost. \u2018I can\u2019t believe the girls are spending this.\u2019 You\u2019re a member of a hunting club. You\u2019re paying $10,000 a year to have the right to go hunting. Do you play golf? Yes. So you really are paying money to have a social interaction,\u201d he told me. \u201cAnd you\u2019re going to bitch about buying a pair of Tory Burch shoes for your daughter? Sit down.\u201d<\/p>\n When I rushed at the University of Mississippi<\/span>, in 2016,<\/span> I assumed that it would be relatively easy to join the sorority I liked best. I was wrong.<\/p>\n On the first day, I wore my hair naturally wild, with curls. I remember thinking: I want them to like me just as I am. The girls next to me had thousands of dollars of David Yurman and Cartier Love bracelets stacked on their wrists. I looked down at the leather bracelet my sister had given me at Christmas. I thought about stuffing it into my pocket but was distracted by the onset of high-pitched chanting. A sea of pink poured out of the house.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t realize then that there were rules to these things, that every move meant something. The girls who were called first\u2014referred to as \u201cNo. 1s\u201d\u2014were escorted through the sacred doors by legendary upperclassmen. One by one, names were called, until I was the only one waiting. Why didn\u2019t I get a blowout?<\/p>\n \u201cAnnie Joy Williams?\u201d<\/p>\n A petite brunette approached me with a look that signaled that she was both bored and had no idea who I was. I realized then that these were the major leagues, and I was a rookie.<\/p>\n Many of the women Alverson works with have family connections to the sorority system or the family wealth that can serve in place of those connections. But some of them are more like the girl I used to be. Alverson put me in touch with a former client named Hadley Drake, who\u2019d worked with him in 2023 before landing at Alpha Delta Pi at the University of South Carolina.<\/p>\n Drake is from Gaffney, South Carolina, where the population is about a third of the University of South Carolina\u2019s. In a town where everyone knows everyone, she\u2019d never had to pitch herself. Her parents knew nothing about sorority life; neither had gone to college. When she brought up the possibility of joining a sorority, her mom thought it was natural to bring in a professional. \u201cShe was like, \u2018Well, when you needed help with cheerleading, we would get you private lessons with your coach,\u2019\u201d so she did the same for sorority recruitment, Drake told me.<\/p>\n Drake had been concerned about appearing as a \u201ccountry bumpkin,\u201d but Alverson assured her that being a small-town southern girl was actually \u201cher golden trait.\u201d Alverson told me that his services benefit the girls he works with long after bid day. \u201cA lot of my coaching really is life-skill coaching,\u201d he said. Drake agrees. This summer, she landed a job as a page at the South Carolina State House. \u201cIn a job interview, I go back to my coaching with Bill nine times out of 10,\u201d she told me.<\/p>\n Another rush coach, Leighton Newberry, told me that she has more and more clients for whom rush is a novel concept. Her Atlanta-based business, Recruitment Ready, just opened a New York City branch. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen a big influx in families from the North sending their children to the South, which has been really interesting and kind of fun to work with,\u201d she told me. (Before #BamaRush went viral in 2021, the number of female undergraduates at the University of Alabama had fallen for three years in a row. Now it\u2019s risen to almost 20,000\u2014the highest number on record.)<\/p>\n Newberry is originally from Knoxville, Tennessee, and rushed at Auburn University in 2015, landing a bid from a top house. Mothers from her hometown reached out, asking if she could help their daughters prepare for recruitment. After seeing those girls get coveted bids, she realized that she could turn her advice into a business.<\/p>\n Recruitment Ready offers one-on-one sessions starting at $175. Clients can sign up to text with Newberry or another coach during each day of recruitment. The most expensive package, called Bid Day and Beyond, costs $4,497. Coaching includes mock rush practices, styling, and social-media cleanup. (\u201cWe\u2019re going through their account with them, and we\u2019re saying, If you would not want the future sorority president, your boyfriend\u2019s dad, or your great-aunt to see this photo, we\u2019re gonna remove it,\u201d Newberry told me.)<\/p>\n Newberry, like Alverson, encourages the girls to discuss their faith if it\u2019s important to them. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to change who you are,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m super passionate about that, because I want girls to find lifelong friends, well beyond recruitment week.\u201d However, politics should be off the table: \u201cDon\u2019t talk about who you voted for in the last election.\u201d<\/p>\n At the University of Mississippi<\/span>, many people ask what sorority you\u2019re in before they ask your name. Girls who don\u2019t get a bid are referred to as GDIs\u2014goddamn independents. By some divine intervention, the good women of Chi Omega saw past my recruitment faux pas and deemed me worthy of membership. Getting into a \u201ctop house\u201d turned me from an anonymous out-of-state girl into somebody who mattered. Boys asked me to date parties. My sorority put me up for homecoming. And I met some of the best friends I\u2019ve ever known. In return, I tried to fit in.<\/p>\n I hid the fact that I wasn\u2019t wealthy behind clothes I couldn\u2019t afford. I didn\u2019t speak up against the antiquated voting system we used to score the girls going through rush, which factored in whether they were legacies, among other things. I didn\u2019t talk about politics as much as I wanted to. It never sat right with me that two letters could make me matter so much more than I had without them. But they did.<\/p>\n The Greek system is obviously deeply flawed and deeply homogenous. Even if chapters try to become more welcoming, many women won\u2019t want to rush if they don\u2019t see members who look like them. And coaching can\u2019t change that\u2014no amount of conversational training will make someone thin or wealthy or white. At the end of the day, if coaching is just about the richest girls, driven by the most obsessive mothers elbowing out the competition, it won\u2019t be good for anyone.<\/p>\n But perhaps all of the attention being directed at rush can help bring out what\u2019s best about Greek life\u2014the way it brings women together\u2014and push the system in a more positive direction. Brandis Bradley, a lawyer and makeup artist with a popular RushTok account, sees the glaring flaws in the Greek system but believes that it\u2019s worth fixing. She rushed but didn\u2019t have the money to pay her dues. Now she follows and promotes young women who might not fall into the conventional sorority-girl camp, trying to \u201cpluck girls from obscurity and financial lack.\u201d Many of them go on to get bids. \u201cI don\u2019t celebrate and platform sorority life because I think it\u2019s a perfect institution,\u201d she told me; she does it because she sees the system\u2019s potential. \u201cHow many opportunities does the world give us to rally around a big group of young women like this?\u201d<\/p>\n