Sorority rush gets Ozempic makeover as some college women resort to weight-loss injections

As GLP-1 medications continue to surge in popularity for weight loss and diabetes treatment, their use is rising among younger adults — with anecdotal reports suggesting the trend is making its way onto college campuses.

Market research has shown that GLP-1s – including semaglutide (Ozempic and Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro and Zepbound) – are growing fastest among adults under 40, particularly young women.

A 2024 analysis published in JAMA found that 162,439 young adults ages 18 to 25 received at least one dispensed GLP-1 prescription in 2023.

Women accounted for 76.4% of those patients, although the analysis included medications prescribed for both diabetes and weight management.

PATIENTS TAKING WEIGHT-LOSS DRUGS OFTEN MAKE 5 CRITICAL MISTAKES, DOCTOR WARNS Separately, the 2025 Monitoring the Future survey found that 2% of students in grades 8, 10 and 12 reported using a prescription GLP-1 medication, while another 2% said they had used one without a prescription.

A recent feature in The Cut , "The Secret 'Ozempidemic' on Sorority Row," argues that GLP-1 weight-loss drugs have quietly become part of campus culture at some elite universities, particularly within the competitive sorority recruitment process.

Three female students interviewed under pseudonyms said they were using compounded semaglutide or tirzepatide to improve their chances during rush and to meet an increasingly thin beauty ideal.

The students described a pressure to look extremely thin, noting that social media and weight-loss competitions among friends have fueled increased GLP-1 use.

POPULAR GLP-1 WEIGHT-LOSS DRUGS LINKED TO POTENTIALLY DEADLY BRAIN DISORDER "For many young women who have just arrived on campus, thinness feels like the ticket into the best possible college experience ," one student said.

"I didn't realize that someone who was 19 and also not super-overweight could get on it.

I was like, ‘I gotta hop on,’" another said.

One former sorority recruiter said, "It's like, 'Well, there's no excuse for people to be fat because they could just get a GLP-1.'" Jay Campbell , longevity and peptide expert and bestselling author, said that while these drugs were built to solve a metabolic crisis, they've been "hijacked as a cosmetic shortcut." "For someone who's metabolically dysregulated, they are a genuine medical intervention ," he told Fox News Digital.

"But to a 20-year-old sorority member with a normal BMI, they look like an aesthetic hack in a syringe." "Sororities are built on social visibility and constant comparison," Campbell said.