By Tuesday, some 200 girls will have chosen to begin the four-day sorority rush process. They will sign up to spend their weekend meeting dozens of sorority members and engaging in hundreds of brief conversations. They will use each interaction to assess the sororities and the Greek system as a whole, deciding if they want to spend the rest of their college years with one group of girls. And they will be judged in turn.

Rush begins in earnest on Friday, Apr.13. The girls, who will have all registered online and paid a $20 fee by the Tuesday deadline, will head to the second floor of Tresidder. There they will be required to attend parties — social gatherings without alcohol — hosted by each of the five sororities who are part of the process: Kappa Alpha Theta, Kappa Kappa Gamma, Pi Beta Phi, Chi Omega and Delta Delta Delta. The events are not hosted at sorority houses in order to avoid discriminating against Kappa Kappa Gamma and Chi Omega, which are unhoused.

Each party will generally consist of many knots of girls chatting with current members of the sorority, asking questions about the sorority and making small talk. Lindsay Schauer ‘07, a former member of Kappa Alpha Theta, described the parties as organized chaos.

“It’s actually sort of a planned job interview process,” she said. “You walk in and you meet a couple of people who are in the sorority, and you get to ask them questions about their sorority. And they also ask you questions. You meet as many people as you can in the sorority, and the people in the sorority try to meet as many rushees as they can. So it’s multiple little interviews going on all the time in the form of casual conversation.”

The rushees cycle through the parties in groups, with one group leaving for the next sorority as another enters. After all the girls have visited all the parties, the sorority members settle down for a long night. Each sorority must decide which girls it is going to invite back for the next day. They each use different methods, including discussion, silent voting or a ballot process, and then send the results to the Intersorority Council (ISC), which organizes rush for these five sororities.

Stanford has six other sororities aside from those in the ISC: Alpha Kappa Alpha and Delta Sigma Theta are members of the African American Fraternal and Sororal Association, and Alpha Kappa Delta Phi, Lambda Theta Nu, Sigma Psi Zeta and Sigma Theta Psi belong to the Multicultural Greek Council.

The rush process for these sororities is somewhat different. For example, Alpha Kappa Delta Phi and Sigma Psi Zeta have hosted several events over the past week to distribute information and meet potential new members in a fun atmosphere.

Girls rushing Alpha Kappa Delta Phi are guaranteed interviews if they attend at least two events and one information session. According to Angela Cheng ‘09, bids to join the sorority are given Monday, Apr. 15 at midnight, and the girls have 24 hours to decide whether they will accept this bid.

“ISC’s events start Tuesday, so the timing lets them attend an ISC event, so they can experience what other sororities have to offer,” Cheng said. “We don’t want to make them commit if they haven’t tried other options.”

Schauer explained that sororities are not looking for any characteristics in particular.

“There’s no meeting saying ‘This is what we want in our girls,’” she said. “The members are basically looking for people that they would want to be friends with. And for every person in each sorority, that’s a different type of person, which is why you get diverse classes in each sorority.”

Jennifer Hernandez ‘07, ISC President, explained that each house must invite a certain number of girls back, depending on the total number of rushees.

“They give us a list — these are the girls that we want to invite back — and there’s a little gray area of girls that they might want back depending on the quota for that night,” she said. “We don’t really know; it’s kind of a number crunch for us on our side.”

A junior sorority member, who wished to remain anonymous in order to avoid violating national chapter rules, explained that girls should not feel insulted if they’re not invited back.

“Unfortunately, rush is often biased towards girls who can make a good impression in a few brief conversations,” she said. “Sometimes these conversations have little to do with the actual quality of the person, as many great people are shy in this intimidating setting.”

The rushees then come back to Tresidder the next morning to find out how many parties they have been invited to that day. They can only attend four parties on the second day, so if they have been invited to five they must decide which sorority’s event they will not attend.

On Saturday, Apr. 14, the process will be repeated. Each girl must attend all of the parties to which she was invited, up to a maximum of four, and stay at each one for a longer period of time. After the events end, there is another round of selection. The next night, the girls can only attend a maximum of three parties. On the second night, each sorority performs skits for the prospective members, and, on the third night, they discuss their philanthropic activities.

The final night, Preference Night, is held at the Sheraton and is a calmer, more formal event. Many girls have dropped out by this time or have not been invited back. But if a rushee makes it to Preference Night, she is assured a bid at a sorority. At this point, the girl can only attend, at most, two sororities’ events. Afterwards, she will list the sororities in order of her preference. The sororities will then rank the girls that they have under consideration, and the two sets of preferences are tabulated late at night. Each girl will receive an offer of membership, called a bid, from only one sorority.

The next day, Apr. 16th, the girl will go back to Tresidder one last time to pick up her bid. Upon opening the envelope, she will discover the name of the sorority and can choose to accept or reject the bid. Rush is over.

“I think everyone who’s done it will agree that it’s really exhausting,” Schauer said. “Everyone is trying to impress everybody. By the second or third day, your face hurts from smiling so much, and you’re tired of answering and asking the same questions to everyone. Like any sort of interview process, it gets tiring once you do it 20 times.”

The sorority rush process is essentially the same at every school. The rules for rush are laid down by the National Pan-Hellenic Council, a body that sets guidelines for fraternities and sororities.