The Secret to Surviving Sorority Rush

Trisha AddicksSat, May 2, 2026 at 11:00 AM UTC

0

The Secret to Surviving Sorority RushStephen Reeves - Getty Images

There is no such thing as rush without cuts. Let me put it another way: You will be cut during rush. I say this con-stantly to every PNM (potential new member) I work with in the months leadingup to rush, but still, they end up being blindsided. Many girls think they’ll be cut only by houses they aren’t interested in or near the end of the process but rarely is that true. Cuts, or “releases” as they are technically called, can happen early and come from sororities you were sure you connected with. Nothing is guaranteed. I once spent three hours on the phone consoling a friend’s daughter after she was cut from her biological sister’s sorority. This is a rare situation and ultimately the result of both sisters’ tough reputations. But hear me when I say rare does not mean never. Anything can happen during rush.Your job as a PNM is to prepare for the reality of releases as much as possible, so when they do happen, they don’t shake your confidence and derail the opportunities you still have. Trust me, letting a tough cut ruin your rush is a terrible—and avoidable—mistake. I once worked with a PNM named Bess who was a soph-omore. She’d gone through rush as a freshman and had gotten cut by every house but two after the first round. That’s a tough place to be, for sure, but it’s far from a death sentence. Well, Bess was so upset that when she went to her next round of parties with her two remaining options, she couldn’t stop tearing up. She decided to drop from rush altogether. That is the absolute last thing I want a PNM to do. It ain’t over till it’s over! She had her choice as a sophomore who had prepared and she is living her best life and has found her people.

I understand that sometimes the emotional roller coaster of rush is just so intense that all you can think about is getting off that damn ride. But I want you to try to reframe what a cut means, because there actually is a serious silver lining to every cut. You’re closer to finding your forever Greek home. No PNM in the history of rush has ever ended the process having to choose between mul-tiple bids as if she were the Bachelorette, ready to dole out the final rose. There is no such thing as multiple bids. You only get one. Cuts are not personal—they’re mathematical. They’re strate-gic. And, more than anything, they’re helpful. I know that might sound ridiculous in the moment, especially if the sorority that re-leased you was your “dream house.” But if that chapter didn’t see the match, it means it probably wouldn’t have been the right fit for you in the long run. No matter how shiny or aspirational it looked from the outside, the reality inside those walls may not have lined up with what you actually need to thrive. Sometimes the best thing that can happen to you is not getting what you thought you wanted. Cuts aren’t setbacks. They’re stepping stones. Every no just clears the path to the one yes that matters most.

Trisha Addicks as a young pledge at the University of Georgia.Trisha Addicks

I’ve seen it play out over and over again. PNMs devastated after an early cut, convinced rush is ruined, only to find themselves a few days later falling in love with a chapter that truly sees them and values them. Again, here’s the truth I want you to hear clearly: It takes only one. I’ve worked with plenty of PNMs who went through all of rush with just one option. One. Talk about pressure! I wouldn’t recommend this method (or magnesium) if you’ve got a nervous stomach like me. But guess what? Those PNMs finished rush the exact same way as the girls with a full schedule every day. Celebrating bid day with their new sisters at their forever Greek home. One chapter that gets you, one house that feels like home, is all you need. It is scary advice to take, but sometimes the best thing you can do is trust that you’ve done the work you needed to do to prepare and that the process will take care of the rest.

How and When Cuts Are Made

Let’s talk about something that no one really explains clearly enough: how cuts happen during rush. Behind the scenes of so-rority recruitment is something called the Release Figure Meth-odology—RFM for short. Sometimes it’s also called “recruitment math.” And while it might sound like a conspiracy theory cooked up in a basement sorority bunker, I promise you, it’s real. It’s also ultimately a really good thing, and once you understand it, it makes a lot of the process make more sense.RFM is a system used on almost every college campus to help manage how many PNMs each sorority invites back after each round. It’s based on a mathematical model that takes into ac-count a chapter’s size, their rate of return, which means how many PNMs typically go back to their chapter when invited, The more “popular” that chapter has been in past recruitments, meaning how many PNMs consistently rate them in their top, the higher the rate of return, and how many girls are going through rush that year. It’s basically an equation designed to ensure two things:

More PNMs get bids.

More chapters hit quota, which is the set number of girls each chapter is allowed to take during recruitment.

Here’s why it matters to you. Let’s say there are two chapters on your campus: one that every PNM ranks in her top two, and an-other one that not as many girls rank highly. If we didn’t have RFM, the “popular” chapter would invite back a huge number of PNMs, and the “less popular” chapter would only invite a few. But, even-tually, the “popular” house would need to make cuts because they can only take so many PNMs in their pledge class, which leaves a lot of amazing girls without bids and “less popular” houses with unmet quotas. With RFM, that popular chapter is only allowed to invite back a limited number of PNMs each round, fewer than a smaller or less in-demand house, based on how likely PNMs are to choose them. It might seem unfair in the moment (especially if you get cut from a house you loved), but it actually gives you a bet-ter chance at receiving a bid from a chapter that is excited about you and has room for you.

Advertisement

RFM is why cuts often feel so intense after the first round, which is often when the biggest releases happen. It also explains why even the most impressive PNMs can get cut from houses where they thought they connected well with the actives. It’s not always about you. Sometimes it’s just math. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s one that tries to make recruitment smoother, fairer, and more successful for PNMs and chapters alike.

After a round is complete, PNMs will be informed either through an app, an online portal, or a text, which houses have invited them back for the next round . . . and which have not. This schedule is generated by a computer that compares the rankings the PNMs submit and the sororities’ rankings of the PNMs. At many schools, when PNMs enter a party, they carry index cards with their names and their unique PNM number on them. These are handed to the sorority active who is assigned to them for that round for “attendance purposes.”

As soon as the PNMs walk out the door at the end of the party, the sorority active writes another party-specific score for that girl. This score is based on their interaction that day and is then tossed into a large bin to be looked at later that night. This is when the recruitment chair (the active in charge of recruitment for her chapter) steps in. Recruitment chairs do not participate in rush during the day. Their biggest job, outside of—ya know, the small feat that is organizing the production of rush—is creating a mas-ter list of the PNM scores and rankings at the end of each round. Every night, when they review the day’s index cards they assess scores and aggregate members’ comments to create their chapter’s rankings and ultimately determine the PNMs’ fates.

I tell you all of this not to scare or intimidate you but to help you realize that there are a lot of factors at play. A cut can feel really, really personal, but more often than not, it really isn’t per-sonal at all.

Trisha Addicks, a graduate University of Georgia and a 1987 Chi Omega pledge, created a rush consultancy in 2017 called It’s All Greek to Me. The above is an excerpt from her book, The Rush Bible, which was published today by Simon and Schuster.

You Might Also Like

25 Watch Brands That Belong in Every Collection

The 50 Best Animated Films to Watch With Your Kids

The 28 Best Westerns of All Time

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Entertainment”