Margo Gray

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 as 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 are girls around your age who 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.

And that intensity helps explain why an entire industry has popped up around it.