I recently heard that greek life dominates at WFU. As a potential incoming freshman, this kind of worries me. I am male and do not plan on joining a fraternity. Will this profoundly affect my social life? Will I stand out and have a hard time making friends? Thanks for the help.
S is a freshmen at Wake. He LOVES it. Is not in a social frat. Has plenty of friends, some are Greek and some aren’t. He became really tight with his hall mates and most of them are not Greek. Plenty of clubs and other things to do. Also, the frats are not exclusive so you can still go to parties. Rush isn’t to spring, so first semester you’ll go to a ton of parties and meet all kinds. Some of those kids will ultimately rush frats and some won’t.
A nice thing about Wake is there are no Greek residential houses and there is a three yr residential campus requirement. That makes for a tight community as the vast majority of kids live on campus in the dorms whether or not they’re in Greek life. Far less exclusive than you hear about at other schools. Many kids within the Greek community also participate in other clubs activities so you’ll be mixing with Greek and non Greek virtually all the time.
While 60% of women are in sororities, only 35% of men are in frats. I think you should be OK. This info is from the latest CDS.
My freshman son is not in a social fraternity either and is perfectly happy with his other activities club sport, clubs etc…
Just wanted to circle back to this after picking up S and driving home after conclusion of first yr. He is not in a social frat (is in a business frat but that is very different- more like a club- he hangs out with the “coed brothers” during events but still sticks with his primary friends outside of the frat)
He had a great yr. Although he was concerned (middle first semester) that not joining a social frat might make spring semester difficult (rush and pledge activities for those in frats), he found that not to be the case. He had a blast his spring semester. Definitely fewer frat parties because he wasn’t pledging, but MOST of his friends are not in frats. He has a very tight group from his dorm (over 20 kids), and none of them are in frats. They had a great time hanging out, partying outside of frats, etc.
An interesting aside is that S frequently was invited to “date functions” or formals by sororities. I assumed that would be reserved for sorority / fraternity mixers but he said just the opposite. The women simply invite whoever they want and there are plenty of unaffiliated guys at these parties. Re frat parties going forward, pretty open in the fall and can access based on who you know in the spring. They go to some. Frankly their group has attracted lots of greek / non greek and they joke that they basically have their own built in social club.
Lots of their female friends are non affiliated as well (about 50%) and the ladies seem to get along (sorority / non soror) just fine - which also surprised me.
Just sharing this so those who are very concerned about a dominant greek life see that you can easily find your tribe with or without the greek system and still have a great time at Wake.