Credit: Larry Gordon / EdSource
When Nhan Tong, a freshman majoring in computer science at USC, arrived on campus in the fall, he was excited to join social clubs, discover a new passion and make some college friends.
A club focused on meetups to make and explore new foods caught Tong’s eye, but he soon learned about the group’s laborious, multistep application process: the submission of several essays, followed by an in-person, structured “vibe check” session, where Tong participated in a group interview with prospective members.
Groups of about 10 students filtered through a courtyard in shifts, answering questions like, “Why do you want to join?”, “If you had to choose one flavor that describes you, what would it be?” and “Where does your passion for food come from?”
A few weeks later, Tong got rejected from the club. He ran over possibilities in his mind, trying to figure out what he’d done wrong — what was off about his “vibe.” The experience frustrated and hardened him to the reality of organized social culture at the University of Southern California, he said.
“They’re trying to look for these specific people, and they encourage everyone to apply, apply, apply,” Tong said. “The issue is not applying itself. It just makes it kind of an unfair and unfriendly environment to newcomers.”
Admission rates to California’s most competitive public and private universities decline year after year, nearing or falling below 10% for the 2028 freshman classes at colleges like USC, Stanford, UC Berkeley and UCLA. In an increasingly cutthroat process, 12th graders vie for a limited number of seats in college classrooms across the state.
Although gaining admission to a selective university is no easy feat, a shifting social dynamic in many elite institutions now means getting in is only part of the challenge. At colleges where freshman classes boast some of the highest-achieving high schoolers in the country, students have developed their own selective, hierarchical culture in the form of exclusive clubs.
While college fraternities and sororities have always selected members through a multistep, sometimes laborious process known as “rush,” a competitive club culture separate from Greek life is an emerging phenomenon.
Ranging from career-oriented organizations that prime students for prestigious Wall Street internships and six-figure salaries to social groups that organize potlucks, interested students are let in on the open secret among their institutions: Whether a club deliberates Fortune 500 company cases or bonds casually over a shared interest, not just anyone gets in just by showing up.
While the issue is most visible at the most selective campuses, there are accounts from California State University campuses along with UC schools and private colleges.
Some universities are beginning to recognize selectivity in student organizations as an issue, but directing clubs to reform their recruiting practices is a tall task.
Starting in fall 2024, USC told its clubs they had to accept any interested student applicants. A number of competitive groups, though, have kept their application processes while hosting events for nonmembers that help them bypass the new rule.
For some student clubs, open invites and welcoming environments are part of an organizational mission amid rising exclusivity.
UC Berkeley senior Ken McNurney, a shed and equipment manager for Cal Archery, the campus’ recreational archery team, noted the importance of having fun in college.
At the beginning of the fall semester, McNurney replied to a user on Reddit’s r/berkeley subreddit page who posted in despair following rejections from clubs requiring applications and interviews. McNurney encouraged dejected students to join Cal Archery in his comment, advertising free beginner sessions for all students.
“I commented because I understand the appeal of those clubs and organizations from a student professional’s perspective, (but) they wind up unintentionally neglecting just having fun and making friends just for the sake of those things,” McNurney said.
Julia Wu, president of Cal Archery, immediately found the club warm and welcoming when encouraged to join the club’s beginner training program after emailing the club out of interest during her senior year of high school. Despite Wu’s “newbie” status, Cal Archery’s accepting environment for both archers with and without competition experience took her with open arms.
“(I’m) so glad Ken used his humor to advertise our club’s friendliness,” Wu said. “I made several friends from my cohort who became my best friends in college.”
But some student leaders say selectivity is necessary.
Christina Mueller, a UC Berkeley junior and co-president of the school’s Model United Nations club, said that the current acceptance rate for new members is around 20%, often receiving around 100 applications every semester.
According to Mueller, funding constraints leave UC Berkeley’s Model UN club no choice but to limit available spots.
“We’d love for (the club) to be larger, especially for a traveling team, but with (Berkeley) being a public institution, we’re limited in how many people the club can support financially,” Mueller said. “We’re very limited in the amount of places we can travel. For other schools, everything is paid for. We are mostly self-funded, meaning people pay out of pocket for their own flights and food. Most people in the club can only afford to travel once a semester to a tournament.”
Mueller said the club’s extensive vetting process — three rounds of interviews, including a “social round” where prospective members are considered based on their compatibility with current members — is crucial to the success of the club’s performance at conferences.
“Reading social dynamics, working with people — including people in conversations while still establishing yourself as a leader — is an important part of doing well in conferences. Intelligence and research can only take you so far,” Mueller said. “Success (in this club) is social awareness, which is why we’ve instituted a social round, showing how you do well in competition.”
Stanford senior Matthew Yekell’s foray into the university’s club scene could be described as a raving success: He got a “yes” from every highly selective group he applied for as a freshman and now serves as vice president of Stanford Consulting, the premier consulting club on campus with a sub-10% acceptance rate.
One of his takeaways from running the club’s recruitment last year? “It’s needlessly exclusive,” Yekell said.
“It’s tragic how selective we have to be, right? I think a lot of club leaders … look at selectivity as a good thing,” said Yekell, pointing to the way some pre-professional clubs wear their low acceptance rates as badges of honor.
Stanford Consulting is more “job” than club, Yekell said, paying its student members for work with real clients. The group recruits like an employer but works to support its largely inexperienced underclassmen applicants with pre-interview coffee chats and workshops. Successful applicants make use of offered support, do their research, reach out for mentorship and demonstrate a strong interest in what the club can do for them, he said.
Interested students who don’t make it in can attend talks with consulting firms and case interview trainings that are open to all, Yekell said.
“We host a lot of programming that’s all-campus,” Yekell said. “We’re cognizant of how … (unfortunate) it is that we can only serve a certain segment of the population.”
In a perfect world, no club would be selective, said USC senior Sullivan Barthel. Barthel, who majors in journalism, is part of a group of students running a campus magazine. Though he’d like for the club to accept anyone interested in contributing, a page limit means restrictions on how many students they can bring on.
“We produce public-facing content in a short amount of time, and it’s really important for our production schedule to have a reasonable number of people on the team,” Barthel said. “The main thing that I talked with the other editorial staff about this summer was just being really intentional with why we are selective.”
But Barthel sees a greater trend on campus affecting students hoping to get involved in social clubs and, more specifically, community service organizations. Upon coming to USC, he found, much to his surprise, that a number of university-affiliated student service groups ask students to write essays, participate in interviews and take knowledge tests just to volunteer with them.
“The dangerous combination is when there’s a very mission-driven organization that also has a really heavy social component,” Barthel said. He thinks there’s a belief that a strong, tight-knit community comes from “a really intense recruitment process.”
On the heels of his food club rejection, USC student Tong sought to disprove the tie between selectivity and community.
Despite feeling disheartened and confused by his first foray into campus involvement, Tong went on to join engineering clubs and an open table-tennis group that meets weekly. He even started his own unofficial, open-invite movie club.
“What I’d want to see from these (selective) clubs is just a little bit more transparency, maybe about who they’re looking for, what exactly they even want,” Tong said. “There’s no way I have to write an essay just to get into a club for socialization. That just doesn’t make sense. If it was socialization, you would just try to get as many people as possible, right?”
Christina Chkarboul is a fourth-year earth science, global studies and journalism student at USC and a member of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.
Jo Moon is a third-year political economy and gender studies student at UC Berkeley and a member of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.
