Make California Post a Preferred Source When you are an elite sorority competing for high-status members at one of California’s most exclusive universities, how far are you prepared to go to secure celebrity cache?
Well, it depends on the level of celebrity you are chasing.
One former Kappa Kappa Gamma member at the University of Southern California claimed some houses sent gift baskets to Natalia Bryant, the daughter of Lakers legend, Kobe Bryant, and U.S. President Barack Obama’s daughter, Sasha.
“I never got confirmation if they were true, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were,” she said.
The California Post could not independently verify the claims about the gifts, either.
But the sources said it was no secret the famous are ruthlessly pursued.
“When a rushee turned out to be a well-off person or a nepo baby,” houses “would put more effort into getting them into the sorority,” the former member said.
That included deploying their most outgoing members to charm the coveted recruits, she claimed.
Rushees are prospective sorority members who go through a competitive recruitment process, visiting different houses in hopes of securing an invitation to join.
Bryant’s daughter ultimately joined Kappa Kappa Gamma, the woman said, while Kylie, the daughter of billionaire Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin, famous for his star-studded all-white parties, joined Delta Gamma.
But for the hundreds of other young women without famous families, the competition to land a place in one of USC’s prestigious sororities is brutal, with a ruthless selection process in which looks, designer clothes, family wealth and social connections determine who gets through the door.
“We rated girls 1–10 during rush and girls definitely got worse scores if they were ugly,” one former Tri Delta member told the California Post.
“We had a couple of big girls. It was more facial ugliness.”
“One sorority would just put pictures of the girls’ Instagrams on a screen on like a slideshow and they’d just vote pretty or not pretty,” she said, wishing to remain anonymous.
The California Post spoke with several former sorority members, all of whom asked to remain anonymous, many of whom went through recruitment at USC.
They detailed a weeklong ordeal of 7 a.m. starts, endless small talk and plenty of tears.
Known as “rush,” the recruitment process sees prospective members visit sorority houses over several rounds, with both sides ranking each other until successful applicants receive invitations to join, known as bids.
At USC, formal recruitment begins in January, before spring classes start, when hundreds of hopefuls must visit all nine Panhellenic sorority houses on the first day.
Each night, the women rank the houses, and the houses rank them in return. Every morning, the list of houses willing to invite them back grows shorter.
“You had to go in every single day at 7 a.m., go to every single house and talk to three different people in every single house,” one recent graduate, who rushed as a sophomore, told the California Post.
At the most sought-after houses, she said, the women doing the recruiting barely concealed their lack of interest.
“You could feel that none of those girls wanted to be there,” she said. “They didn’t want to talk to you.”
The graduate, who is of Indian background, claimed houses repeatedly paired her with their only member of color.
One opened their conversation with: “Oh, yeah, my boyfriend’s Indian. I love Indian people.”
“I was just so taken aback,” she said. “I don’t know what to say to this.”
Each day of recruitment has its own dress code, laid out in an official lookbook complete with Pinterest examples.
The outfits progress from T-shirts and jeans on the first day, to cocktail dresses midweek and floor-length gowns for the final “preference” round.
A recent graduate from a low-income family who joined Alpha Phi recalled being baffled by one dress-code description: “brunchy.”
“OK, so y’all think I have money, you know what I mean?” she said. “I had to be like, ‘OK, what do people wear to brunch? What does this mean?'”
To her, the term was code for looking wealthy — the polished, expensive style of someone accustomed to an affluent lifestyle who went to brunch rather than work.
Former members said hopefuls deliberately flaunted Cartier rings and Hermès bracelets to impress recruiters.
“Everyone was dripped out,” one graduate said, describing a sea of LoveShackFancy florals, David Yurman jewelry, Van Cleef & Arpels clover bracelets and Cartier Love bracelets.
“But everyone was dripped out in the same thing.”
A nice dress “could start at $150 and go all the way up,” she said.
“I don’t think there’s really a limit.”
And the clothes could help decide a woman’s fate.
“Whatever outfit that you pull together is 100% part of what determines which house you get into.”
Another former Kappa Kappa Gamma member, a woman of color from a wealthy family, said once the recruiters discovered her parents’ financial status through her Instagram account which you submit as part of the process, the top houses kept inviting her back.
“I had a very different experience than a lot of people of color because of that,” she said.
She compared the recruitment system to a meme in which people stand on stacked blocks to see over a fence.
“If you were white, you know, that’s a block. If you’re richer, I think that’s a block. If you’re friends with more people, that’s definitely a few blocks,” she said.
When her own house was recruiting, she said, members frequently judged applicants by their Instagram photos before meeting them.
“It was very much so a lot of looking just at the Instagram and being like, ‘Oh, she’s cute,'” she said.
“They wouldn’t really say if they didn’t think the person was attractive, but they would make it very obvious if they did.”
Meanwhile, the grad from the low-income family said she knew immediately that she would struggle to fit into some of the most prestigious houses.
The women across from her were “tall, blond; super, super skinny,” and some “maybe had work done already.”
For those rejected by their dream houses, the emotional fallout could be devastating.
Each morning, rush groups gathered to open their schedules and discover which houses had invited them back.
One graduate remembered her group met on steps near Taper Hall, in the center of campus.
“A lot of girls would run away crying,” she said, while recruitment counselors pulled devastated hopefuls aside to “help them through the grief.”
One remembered rejected applicants sobbing: “This is the worst day ever … that was the only house I wanted.”
Meanwhile, fraternity brothers gathered on their porches, passing judgment on the women as they shivered in the January cold.
“This is just so dystopian,” she recalled thinking.
Once classes began, she said, male students would openly speculate about which women were attractive enough to land places in top houses.
She eventually dropped out before the final round, although she later received a last-minute invitation known as a “snap bid.”
For those who made it inside, membership could bring a lavish lifestyle — at a hefty price.
The former Kappa Kappa Gamma member estimated that she paid between $5,000 and $7,000 a semester to live in her sorority house, which came with a chef preparing three meals a day, housekeeping and a security guard.
The social calendar revolved around fraternities, with themed mixers, “date dashes,” mock frat weddings and chaotic formals.
“It’s always someone throwing up on the bus on the way there,” one graduate said.
“We’re gonna black out on Monday, and then we’re gonna black out on Tuesday for Taco Tuesday.”
Although drinking was a choice, she added, “it was easier to connect with everybody” if you did.
She also claimed members of some top houses routinely insulted other women, calling them “fat or ugly or stupid,” while the ”retard” slur was thrown around “like it’s nobody’s business.”
Despite the intense competition, accusations of superficiality and social hierarchy, former members said little appeared to have changed.
“It just kind of surprised me how redundant the entire community still is in terms of the traditions and the social standings they still uphold,” another graduate said.
USC Panhellenic Council did not return the Post’s request for comment.
