BY CASEY GLICKMAN
With spring primary recruitment less than two months away, the nerves of anticipation have started to settle in for girls who are considering joining one of the University of Maryland’s 16 Panhellenic chapters.
The 2025 primary recruitment process at UMD is split into two weekends, starting on Jan. 31 and concluding on Feb 9. The UMD Panhellenic Association, PHA, outlines a breakdown of each of those days and what girls going through recruitment should expect.
To ease some of the anxiety about recruitment, senior mechanical engineering major and PHA Vice President of Recruitment, Kathryn Lawless, and senior neuroscience major and PHA Executive Vice President, Sofia Sirianni, share their recruitment advice.
Managing your time
With spring semester classes starting during the week and recruitment taking up the days of the weekend, managing your time between school work and recruitment is key.
Lawless speaks from her own experience of having to balance a heavy load of school work while going through recruitment. She emphasized that the best thing you can do is to get your work done during the week, that way you can devote the weekends solely to the recruitment process.
“Just because you’re going through recruitment, you shouldn’t put school to the side,” she said. “School is still 100% the priority and the chapters that we have understand that.”
Going through recruitment with friends
Navigating recruitment with your friends can be both fun and challenging. Having friends to lean on during difficult decisions while also getting excited with them is invaluable. However, it can be hard to separate your opinions from those of your friends.
“I think my biggest advice would really be to focus on your own conversations and not your friend’s experiences,” Lawless said.
At the end of the day, recruitment is a very personal experience, it is about honing in on your experiences and choosing a chapter where you feel most at home.
For Sirianni, making recruitment personal meant she and her friends decided not to talk about their experiences visiting different chapters.
“Honestly I’m really glad that we didn’t end up in the same chapters,” Sirianni said. “I got to meet all of their friends, and my circle just kind of expanded from there.”
Going through recruitment solo
Entering recruitment and not knowing anyone else brings along its own set of challenges. However, with that also comes great opportunities.
During Potential New Member Orientation, girls get to meet their Rho Gammas. Rho Gammas are members of a Panhellenic chapter who temporarily disassociate from their chapter to guide potential new members through recruitment.
“They are there to be not just your mentor, but also your friend,” Sirianni said.
Along with your Rho Gamma, you also get placed into a Rho Gamma group which is made up of other girls going through recruitment, so you have an immediate network of people supporting you early on in the process.
“Embracing the community within recruitment is really going to help you make the most out of your recruitment experience and feel connected to the Panhellenic Sisterhood before you even join a chapter,” Lawless said.
Closing advice
“I think just going into it with an open mind, trying it out and see what happens. That’s my biggest piece of advice,” Sirianni said.
Before going into recruitment, PHA emphasizes the importance of taking some time for self-reflection: Think about the aspects of sorority life that matter most to you whether that is philanthropic efforts, sisterhood bonding events, academic support or leadership opportunities.
With 16 Panhellenic chapters, there are so many different types of people and experiences you can have depending on what you are looking for in a chapter.
“At the end of the day, being in a sorority is about support, and it’s about having people that you know are going to support you through anything,” Lawless said.