Samantha von Sperling paid to help girls get into sorority

Samantha von Sperling walks through lower Manhattan in a fuchsia statement dress and gold sneakers, heels in hand, before scaling a flight of steps to a perch overlooking New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty. In a flash, the sneakers are off and the heels are on, and she strikes a series of poses for the camera with the ease of a practiced professional and former dancer. The air is chilly but not yet ‘bomb cyclone’ caliber; von Sperling’s hair blows fabulously in the wind and her words are clipped, articulate.

This is exactly the sort of woman you’d imagine to be a sorority recruitment consultant – which, it turns out, is actually a job. And, von Sperling boasts, she’s pretty damn good at it.

‘I’ve had a 20-year career as an internationally acclaimed image consultant who’s worked with a lot of famous people, been on a lot of television and been on television working with young people – so this is why you call me,’ she says. ‘I’ve been around the longest and I’m the best. Period.’

Von Sperling – whose name alone should qualify her for the specialty – relies mostly on general image consulting work but was first approached about ten years ago, she says, to help teenagers get into sororities. The demand has only increased since then. She offers individually tailored consulting, which costs $300 an hour.

‘These services are not inexpensive, and I think maybe some of my competitors are maybe a little more affordable, but I’ve been in business for 20 years,’ she says. ‘I’ve served two royal families and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. I don’t need to twist myself inside out, either, just to capture this particular branch of business.

‘That probably doesn’t sound great,’ she says, catching herself. ‘What I really mean to say: Yeah, I have the most experience, and that experience should be valued – because if you are going to spend your parents’ hard-earned money, it should be with the understanding that the skill sets that I’m going to help impart on you are skill sets that you can take with you for the rest of your life. They will serve you for the rest of your life, and work is extremely expensive and I get results. Failure is not an option with me.

‘So I’m tough,’ says von Sperling, who shrugs when asked if she’s ever made her young clients cry. ‘It’s a lot of work; it’s a lot of effort. Don’t waste your time, your parents’ money and don’t waste my time. It’s a two-way street. If you want results, you do as I say, otherwise I can’t guarantee the results.’

It’s a year-round business, sorority recruitment consulting; many schools hold their rush events in the fall, but there are both formal and informal recruitment processes across the country in the spring. Some students choose to spend a semester observing the different houses before trying to join, and one New York-based consultant, Lorie Stefanelli, has been advising a potential University of Pennsylvania recruit since the autumn. Then there are the high school students getting a head start; research and preparation is beginning earlier and earlier, consultants say. 

Von Sperling, who charges $300 an hour, gives her young clients tips on everything from interview techniques and etiquette to posture, wardrobe choices and makeup products

The sorority recruitment process is complicated and involves a series of events and interviews at different houses at each college or university

Proponents of Greek life argue that sororities offer support, friendship, leadership and networking opportunities for women

Brooke Howard, who is based in Missouri, got informal advice from her cousin – who founded consulting business Go Greek Girl – during her own sorority recruitment days

But the requests von Sperling gets come mostly from concerned mothers, she tells DailyMail.com.

‘Usually the mom calls me and says, “My daughter’s rushing a sorority; she wants to pledge X, Y, Z – and then I get a list of problems from the mother’s perception,’ says von Sperling. ‘It’s the kinds of things that you would expect from an 18-year-old: lack of confidence, bad posture. Usually lack of confidence is the big one; insecurity is the biggest concern across the board. It’s sad to me that we are a country that raises our female population to be that insecure by the age of 18.’

Von Sperling had no personal experience of Greek life during her college years at NYU and had to give herself a crash course on the intricacies of recruitment – a process which, for the uninitiated, is not only daunting but technically complicated.

Potential new members (they’re called PNMs now, not pledges) have to meet with every house on campus in a mutually selective process as the candidates are whittled down. They need to submit paperwork including resumes and letters of recommendation. It’s no small undertaking.

‘I have talked to mothers who are like, “I wasn’t cool when I went to school, so I don’t understand my daughter – help me bridge the gap. I don’t know what to do for her,”’ she says, estimating that such situations account for 30-40 percent of her sorority recruitment business.

‘I’d say the majority are mothers who were in sororities and – depending, it seems to me, on the region from where the phone calls come from, there are varying degrees of pressure for the daughter to be in the same sorority as the mother. In other words – and this is going to sound really harsh – but these are the kinds of phone calls I get: Mom was head cheerleader. Mom is gorgeous. Mom was in the ‘It Girl’ sorority.

‘And her daughter is not that. Her daughter is more of an insecure wallflower, but the mother is gung-ho that her daughter gain access to this sorority, gain entrance. That’s a lot of pressure. That’s a lot of pressure for me; that’s an ungodly amount of pressure for the daughter. So that’s usually when we go to work.’  

The majority of her consulting is done over the phone and on facetime; she goes through each girl’s wardrobe, helps select outfits for each day and event, has the girl separately pack them so they’re ready to go and coaches them on interviewing techniques. She has her own tricks of the trade, too; there’s the traditional book-on-the-head exercise for posture, and she suggests holding books under the armpit to practice dainty eating. 

‘I do a lot of makeup tutorials, I do a lot of recommendations of dermatologists, skin products, things like that,’ von Sperling says. ‘Because yes, I can’t ignore these aesthetic components of this kind of competition. I say competition because it is a competition – so many places and not everyone gets selected. So I can’t ignore the aesthetic component of this competitions. I can’t.

‘I have to address the hair, makeup, skin, wardrobe, nails issue – but I also refuse to deny the social graces, how you present yourself, how you walk into a room, what you choose to share about yourself, how you choose to share it, how you interact and engage other people around you, how do you win friends, social skills. That’s the important stuff. That is the meat and potatoes.

‘We can talk about bobby pins until the cows come home, but who you are, your fiber and your being and how you put that forward in the most appealing way possible …. How do you get other people around you excited about who you are? And usually that’s a lot to do with making other people feel excited about themselves.’ 

Lorie Stefanelli, a Texan now based in Brooklyn, was heavily involved during and after college with Greek life and, at the suggestion of her husband, channeled that into a consulting job

Stefanelli, second from right, during her college days in El Paso with Chi Omega; she eventually became the president of her chapter

Stefanelli says most parents who seek her out have not been through the Greek process themselves and are unfamiliar with its intricacies – which include an online application, resumes and letters of recommendation 

She likens the mothers who hire her to pageant moms ‘100 percent: same breed, different sport,’ she says.

‘They’re very competitive, very disciplined and successful,’ she says. ‘Mom is successful. Mom was successful in some way; even if she doesn’t work, she married well. That takes some doing, too. Either way, she’s done it, and she wants her daughter to do it, too. And the difference is that the pageant moms mightn’t have the level of education. The pageant mom could be from a trailer park.

‘I was image consultant for the Miss Universe organization for several years, and I only worked with the top three title holders: Miss Universe, Miss USA, Miss Teen USA. So my job was to give aid to the winning ten percent – to the three girls that had already won. Perfection on top of perfection. And I’ve spent enough time in the pageant world to know that a lot of pageant girls are from disadvantaged families – but the sorority moms are more educated.

‘This is a gross generalization, but it is the same animal, different sport. Different demographic – because the pageant moms, it’s just about the pageant – and for these sorority moms, it’s more about how to do in the world – because this is all-around college. These are people that are highly educated, and so you have that layer of privileged education on top of the pageant veneer. It’s like a double whammy.’

Von Sperling’s business and priorities, however, are only one side of the coin when it comes to the advent of sorority recruitment consulting. As she mentioned, there are more affordable options, and other women take a different approach. Brooke Howard, who lives in Missouri, is a consultant for Go Greek Girl, a company founded by her older cousin – who informally advised Brooke herself when she was rushing in 2007 at the University of Mississippi.

‘We have a very positive focus with Go Greek Girl,’ Howard, who graduated in 2011, tells DailyMail.com. ‘I think we have a very strong and kind of long-running concept for not just those four years but for long-term friendship and networking and business.

‘There are many other things by many other companies, and that is fine for them and their business model. But the mantra we like to stick by … it’s just empowering women in the process and the confidence in themselves and helping them with the Greek system. If a girl is going to ask me, “What do you think of this outfit?” I absolutely give an opinion. I don’t walk in and say, okay, let’s go through your wardrobe; show me each and every piece.

She adds: ‘I’m not going to sit down and consult with a girl, I’m not going to look at her and be, OK, now that we’ve discussed this, Part B: your wardrobe. That’s really not my approach or our approach.’

Howard, who was a science major and now works as a financial analyst for a medical administration consulting firm, works part-time for Go Greek Girl, whose consultants all work remotely.

‘Quite honestly, these are young and impressionable women, and they need to be built up and confidence needs to be instilled,’ she says. ‘We are very successful women with Go Greek Girl; we have a wide variety of very talented and strong women – and that’s something we wish to move forward and share.

‘I think we provide good role models, not only for the Greek life recruitment process, but also for what comes after. I can reach out to fellow consultants or even the relationships that I’ve built with those types of women that do exist in the Greek system … they’re everywhere. And those are the ones that are supporting me on my new business ventures and supporting all of us going out on our own and just being the type of women that we really want to be. Go Greek Girl is about consulting during the recruitment process, but there are tools that we use forever.’

She adds: ‘We’ll be there to let you be you – as corny as that might sound. But that’s also going to be the most positive way, the best way to find the best fit for yourself.’

One of the main goals at Go Greek Girl, she says – in addition to teaching PNMs interview skills and how to present themselves well – is convincing them to keep an open mind about their sorority choice, rather than have a strict list of which houses they want to join.

“We’re encouraging the girls to go in with an open mind, which is also very important, and to find the best fit for them and to trust the process,’ she says, adding that she believes the Greek system has gotten more diverse in recent years and nurtures the burgeoning interests and ambitions of young women.

‘You’ve heard the phrase “MRS degree,” I’m sure,’ she says. ‘That’s not the only degree sororities are looking for anymore, from what that general stereotype was. I think that sororities are providing a much larger platform for girls to branch out into these opportunities, and that’s a huge bonus.’

She’s says it’s disappointing when circumstances play into superficial sorority stereotypes – such as an email that went viral a few years ago from a sorority in University of Southern California, where women were given a very specific (and laughable) list of do’s and don’ts for everything from hair (no roots!) nails, makeup, social media use and clothing (‘I cannot stress how important Spanx are.)

‘It’s very disheartening to find when something like that goes viral and everyone labels that stereotype onto all of Greek life, because I know that there are different ones that revolved around the party atmosphere and around that type of superficial aesthetic, and that’s not something we focus on,’ she says.

‘I can definitely say, with the sorority that I was a part of and really within the Greek system at the University of Mississippi, that was, “Ok, well, move on, we don’t do that, we don’t enforce that, and we don’t recommend those actions,” because that’s not going to get you the diverse group of women that you want to be around. It’s just not positive. It’s not something we choose to affiliate with.’

The number of girls going through the recruitment process varies from school to school, and the process is particularly rigorous in the South

Recruitment can take place during both the fall and spring semesters; for many consultants, it’s a year-round business

Von Sperling admits that she is tough on her young clients, saying: ‘Don’t waste your time, your parents’ money and don’t waste my time’

One mother who hired consultant Stefanelli to help her daughter, who attends college in the Midwest, says a sorority would help her daughter find a ‘tribe’ and compared hiring a consultant to hiring a math tutor in an effort to give her child the best college experience

(That being said, Howard still upholds a strict set of Greek rules; she declines to provide any photos of her during her own sorority life and asks that her house not be named. The tentacles of the Greek system stretch far and wide and continue governing alumni years after graduation, it seems.)

It’s a reality that’s mystifying to people unfamiliar with Greek life. It proved veritably impossible to find anyone – mother or daughter – willing to go on the record about hiring a recruitment consultant; not only would it be embarrassing, but they are worried about ramifications within the house. One girl, named publicly in a story several years ago, insisted when reached by DailyMail.com that the entire thing had been made up (despite very specific quotes attributed to her by a respected national news outlet.)

But that clandestine nature gives rise for the need for sorority recruitment consulting in the first place.

‘The moms that I feel like we’ve interacted with are, “I wasn’t in the Greek system, I would do anything to support my child, but I can’ answer these questions for her. Can you answer these questions?” Howard says. ‘It’s really just people seeking out some advice for their daughters.’

She adds: ‘We haven’t ever really had any of those pageant moms … it’s really on a very laid back and casual level. I grew up as a dancer for many years … I know the stage mom. I know the helicopter mom. I was also a nanny for years; I’ve seen that, and you also obviously see it in television and such. We haven’t really dealt with many of those. We’ve also had a very positive experience with probably 99 percent of our clientele.’

They get requests from high school juniors and seniors wondering about the overwhelming process, and they put together packets and group sessions to ‘discuss the process, kind of debunk some of the myths … just really demystify the system for them and give them the confidence to go through.

(Von Sperling sniffs at anything that isn’t one-on-one, saying ‘I could probably make more money’ but ‘all of their hope deserves all of my effort’ on an individual basis.)’

One mother of a Midwestern college student can’t speak highly enough of the sorority recruitment consultant she hired for her daughter – who eventually, after unsuccessful attempts, found her niche and her house. The family worked with Lorie Stefanelli, a soft-spoken, bright-faced Texan who is now based in Brooklyn – who had been president of her chapter during her senior year of college in El Paso.

‘If I had thought it through and been more knowledgeable earlier, I might’ve said to my daughter as a senior … there’s preparation that we need to do with this, the same as applying to get into college,’ says the mother, who we’ll call Jane. ‘I didn’t realize that it’s rigorous and it’s sort of intense and more involved than just like, “Oh, I want to play clarinet for the pep bad.” There’s a process that’s part of it.’

Her daughter looked great on paper, Ann says, but was struggling with confidence compounded by a family tragedy. She tried to rush during her freshman year but withdrew.

‘My daughter’s not a big drinker, not a wild girl; she’s not going to be that stereotypical mean girl kind of person – so I was looking for a good fit for her,’ Jane says.

‘She came home at spring break and I said, “Rather than me saying to you, I think maybe you’re coming across as more nervous or less chatty or outgoing or introverted than I know you are, I’d really like to put you in touch with someone who can give an independent evaluation of how you could across in the ways most important for sorority recruitment,’ Jane tells DailyMail.com. ‘It’s like speed dating for the girls that want to be in the sorority.’

Stefanelli echoed her own concerns and gave her daughter tips to help her chances: confidence building, more leadership roles within the university, other pieces of advice. Jane, a single mother, recalls she wrote two separate checks for a total of less than $250 – and Stefanelli has stayed in touch for years with her daughter, who is now in a sorority during her senior year and thriving.

She says she looks at it ‘in the same way that when your kids are in high school, you’re looking at providing them with the best possible springboard to college.

‘I paid a year of a math tutor; I put braces on her teeth … all the ways that you would want to give your child, your young adult, that kind of tutoring and support and encouragement for the specific things they want to pursue, this is really no different,’ she says. ‘It’s just a different avenue. If parents are like, why would I pay that money to help my kids make friends? It isn’t about that. It’s skill-based and experience and connections.’

And it is, says Ms Stefanelli, also very much about support and friendship; Jane described it as trying to find her daughter ‘a tribe.’ Stefanelli continued to be heavily involved with her sorority as an alumna and can’t say enough positive things about the Greek system; the weekend after we speak for the first time, she flies to Nashville for a trip with her old sorority sisters. She happily shows off photo albums from her sorority days.

Her continued affiliation with her sorority eventually led to her consulting business, which she started over three years ago.

‘I had a lot of friends who had nieces or younger sisters or just knew of other girls who were going through recruitment and would ask me for advice: what does this mean or I forgot how we did this, what should she do if this happens? So I found myself giving out a lot of this advice, and one night my husband was like, “Oh my gosh, you were on the phone for two hours – what was going on?” And I just was explaining to him it’s very emotional and exhausting, this whole process. It just takes a lot out of you. He was like, “God, two hours, you should charge for that if you’re going to be giving this advice out for free.” And so that’s kind of what happened. I started being a sorority consultant for girls who were looking to join a sorority.’

Most of her business begins in late spring or summer, as girls are preparing for their freshman or sophomore year at college, but she’s currently working with a girl who wants to rush at University of Pennsylvania this spring.

‘At schools like Georgetown and Penn, NYU, Columbia, they’re not looking for the girl wearing the Lily Pulitzer dress. These are girls who are really looking at this as a way to be involved, to also have that kind of built-in structure and friendship, this type that’s also looking at connections – they want to work for some of the best companies or some of the best people out there, and this is a good way for them to make those connections.

‘This is actually my first girl that I’ve worked with that’s going to a school like this, so I’m kind of learning along the way.’

Over the summer she worked with three girls going to the University of Alabama and one at Ole Miss, where the process is on a much larger scale with many more girls; more than 2,700 recruits were competing for slots in Alabama, she says. Like Ms Howard, she says is usually contacted by mothers, most of whom were not in sororities themselves.

‘It’s more of, “I want the best for my daughter, I want my daughter to have a good experience, I want my daughter to be successful,’ Stefanelli says. ‘I think that’s what it really is for them.’

She adds: ‘When we first start working together, me being in New York, I obviously have to do my sessions with them over skype or over the phone. I’ve traveled just a handful of times to meet girls in Texas, just because I’m from there – so it’s easy for me to go back.

‘Basically, we start working right away; we are talking about just the guidance and registration for recruitment, because there’s a whole online application you have to do that sometimes isn’t always easy to navigate. So I walk them through that and what they should be listing,’ she says, as well as helping the girls get their letters of recommendation. ‘I also start pulling outfit ideas. At this point, we already have the agenda for rush at their school, so we know what parties are on what days.

‘I would say about a month in is when we start doing interview and etiquette skills; we also after that, about a couple of weeks before, I usually walk them through the process of sorority rush, but from the sorority’s point of view – so that they kind of have an inside idea who they’re talking to and why they’re talking to that person. I give them an idea about how they vote on potential newcomers, I give them an idea of how the invites are structured.’

She puts her background in human resources to use, Stefanelli says, helping her sometimes have difficult conversations with her clients.

‘I had a girl this past summer who as at Alabama, and she was a very cute girl and very humble and down to earth,’ she tells DailyMail.com. ‘She had a full ride scholarship to Alabama. She’s very smart, great grades – and she just wasn’t a girl that liked to dress up. And I told her, “You know what?” I was like, “Look, we’re past the point of beating around the bush. I’m just going to tell you directly, you need to stand out. I know this isn’t like you, you don’t like wearing lip gloss or accessories or things like that, but you need to make yourself stand out – because you’re competing with 2,700 other girls.

‘While on paper you look great, because you have a lot of things that a house would want, you have to be able to take that from what’s on paper and you have to be able to present it in person. So every day she sent me a picture of what she was wearing, and I said, you need to change those shoes, add a necklace, pull your hair back or whatever. It was funny, because at first she didn’t listen to me the first day, and she came back and she’s like, oh, you know what? You were right … I was like, alright, we’re going to keep doing this every single day until you feel comfortable.