Thousands of young women packed into Colonial Life Arena in early August, the air buzzing with excitement. The seats were filled Potential New Members — women eager to find a home amongst the University of South Carolina’s sororities.
This year’s Panhellenic sorority recruitment is the biggest it’s ever been at USC: 2,560 women signed up. That’s the biggest recruitment class in the country this year, too.
A major driver of interest in Panhellenic sorority life? Social media.
In 2021, women at the University of Alabama started documenting their recruitment week (rush) experience on TikTok. Interest exploded. Since then, RushTok has become one of the biggest annual social media trends, driving online engagement that’s spilled out into the real world.
Ella Brooks, a senior who serves as the Panhellenic Council’s vice president for public relations, always knew she wanted to rush a sorority at USC, just as her mom had. But as her freshman year approached, she turned to TikTok to discover what the recruitment process was like.
While rushing, she made content herself, too, garnering thousands of likes with videos that showcased her “Outfit of the Day” and scenes from the organized chaos of recruitment.
Now that she serves on the Panhellenic Council, the governing body for the community, she’s seen the broader influence social media has on Greek life.
“Social media has impacted the sorority experience overall, even from the national Panhellenic standpoint,” she says. “There are more women interested than we ever dreamed.”
But Brooks hopes people will find what awaits sorority members beyond what’s portrayed on social media, including the Panhellenic Association’s four pillars: sisterhood, scholarship, leadership and philanthropy.
#RushTok at USC: Recruiting, researching and resume-boosting
Starting with young women at Alabama who wanted to share their experience rushing a sorority, RushTok — and by extension college- and Greek life-related social media content — has helped fuel interest in fraternities and sororities at college campuses.
At USC, sororities like Zeta Tau Alpha and Kappa Kappa Gamma are generating millions of likes for videos featuring synchronized dancing in front of the chapters’ palatial houses. A video Sydney Morgan directed as the director of public relations for USC’s chapter of Pi Beta Phi was featured on Inside Edition and in the New York Post. Under her direction, the chapter’s TikTok account gained 10,000 new followers, while its Instagram followers more than doubled.
“It was definitely a good resume booster,” says Morgan, whose sorority experience helped her excel at her internship with USC’s social media team.
As a high school senior in New York City, Morgan relied on TikTok and YouTube videos to get an inside peek at what it was like to attend an SEC school, as well as rush a sorority. She says that watching this content gave her an idea of what to wear and what the process was like, but rules over what can and cannot be filmed also helped retain some of the mystery of recruitment.
Seeing what other girls were posting online during recruitment helped make connections, too.
“Social media definitely helps bring community together, especially all these girls who are going through recruitment. They have a lot in common,” Morgan says. “Even if they don’t have a lot in common, they just see, ‘Oh, this girl’s rushing. Let me DM her because I saw her video.’ And then you become friends.”
When Brooks went through recruitment, she was already a couple years into creating content of her own on TikTok. She decided to document her experience as a PNM, then continued posting her freshman year journey. When it was her turn to help recruit for her chapter, she saw how that content helped younger women.
“When I recruited for my chapter, I would talk to girls and they were like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve seen you before. I saw your experience, and it made me a lot less nervous about what this was going to look like for me,’” Brooks recalls.
While plenty of friends are being made online, it’s still the in-person recruitment events — and subsequent new member process — serving as the proving ground for lifelong friendships.
“It’s the epitome of sisterhood,” says Carli Mercer, USC’s assistant dean of Fraternity and Sorority Life.
USC Greek Life is growing across the board
Mercer says the growth seen in Panhellenic sororities is consistent with USC’s other councils, which includes 39 additional Greek-lettered organizations in the Cultural Greek Council, Interfraternity Council and National Pan-Hellenic Council.
Of the undergraduate students enrolled at USC in the spring 2026 semester, more than 30 percent were members of one of these four Greek life councils. Roughly two-thirds of those chapter members are women.
“The community is growing across all four councils. It’s a testament to our student leaders, who are providing a great experience,” Mercer says. “They really do take the lead on everything. The chapters have student-led organizations, and some of those men and women are running a large corporation — not even a small business — with hundreds of members.”
“We have 14 chapter presidents who lead 400 to 500 people, and they do it every day with confidence, with grace, with class. And that’s setting them up for success in the rest of their life.”
Brooks’ work handling her chapter’s social media led to a summer internship. One of her sisters was promoted to manager at her job because of her communications skills. Another sister, now an alumna, has excelled in her sales job thanks to the networking skills events like recruitment require.
“People don’t really recognize that women in Greek life are high-achieving women who put themselves in positions to lead organizations,” Brooks says. “I mean, we have 14 chapter presidents who lead 400 to 500 people, and they do it every day with confidence, with grace, with class. And that’s setting them up for success in the rest of their life.”
Brooks said these professional development facets of Greek life — including the high bar for academic performance and the hundreds of thousands of dollars raised for charitable causes each year — is often left out of the conversation on RushTok videos, but they’re core tenets of the Panhellenic experience.
And, as Mercer mentions, the sisterhood element of Panhellenic sororities is what makes the experience a life-changing one.
“We really want to make sure people feel comfortable coming here, and they feel connected to some sort of organization where they have resources,” Brooks says.
With more than 6,000 women part of the Panhellenic experience, the sisterhood is growing.
This year marks the first official formal recruitment process for Kappa Alpha Theta, which reorganized at USC last fall. The chapter had previously left campus in 2001.
“We are just really, really excited to have another chapter to help accommodate all of these people,” Brooks says. “We are so excited to have them, and they’re obviously a newer chapter, but they’re doing phenomenal.”
The number of chapters is expected to continue growing, Brooks says, maximizing students’ options for finding a Panhellenic sorority to call home.
"What we try to do is create that family experience,” Brooks says.