<p>How's the greek life at MIT? According to **************.com, MIT has a A+ in greek life. I am just curious because I don't really see MIT students as the stereotypical frat boys.</p>
<p>How stereotypical-frat-boy MIT Greek guys are varies across frats - there’s not really one standard Greek life at MIT. That said, the most horrible stereotypes are pretty much nonexistent. </p>
<p>I’d suggest doing rush and seeing if you come across any interesting houses :)</p>
<p>In terms of numbers, about half of guys at MIT are affiliated with one of twenty-six fraternities, while around 25% of women are affiliated with one of six(?) sororities. As Piper said, the personalities of these individual organizations are all over the map.</p>
<p>So the Greek system is quite vibrant, and many students choose to be a part of it. That said, there are many different ways to have a social life at MIT, so the Greek scene isn’t the be-all and end-all of campus life.</p>
<p>I think it can be anything you want it to be, from the pretty stereotypical to the exact opposite end of the spectrum. I’d say try rush but don’t feel pressured to join if you don’t find anywhere that you truly like. There isn’t a sense of being “left out” if you’re not in a frat and you can still go to the parties if you so choose. As mollie said, there are a lot of other opportunities to be social, and social groups tend to for around dorms, sports teams, other extracurriculars and religious groups just as well as fraternities and sororities. </p>
<p>Also, if you don’t feel ready to pledge freshman year, you can always do rush any year you want. Some of the sororities also have informal rush throughout the year and during IAP/SPring semester, but I don’t know if frats do this at all. </p>
<p>Something you might want to look into is ILGs - Independent Living Groups. They have rush at the same time as fraternities and sororities and they also do informal rush.</p>
<p>I belong to and lived in a fraternity my years at MIT. None were your stereotypical fraternity houses. Some were close but there has to be a fair amount of studying going on to remain at MIT (so no beer flowing all the time!!!). Most considered themselves independant living groups when I was there and that is probably a closer stereotypical model to think of the fraternities.</p>
<p>Like the other posters have said, look into them. You never loose by getting info and making an informed decision as to whether they are for you or not.</p>
<p>For many reasons, I believe that joining a fraternity at MIT was one of the best decisions I ever made.</p>
<p>Does the initiation/rush consist of the stereotypical ‘hazing’?</p>
<p>"Does the initiation/rush consist of the stereotypical ‘hazing’? " </p>
<p>NO. With today’s laws, rules and liability issues, any amount of hazing would be stupid.</p>
<p>The fraternities are all very different. 2-3 of them are very stereotypical (Kappa sig, Sig Ep, and Fiji were all pretty stereotypical when I was there.) I’ll leave it to a current student to give you a run-down on the frat personalities as they may have changed. Hazing has happened in the past in some houses, but the degree of hazing varies widely, from actual physical abuse (very rare) to forced alcohol consumption (less rare) to monopolizing your time and giving you more and more stuff to do (somewhat common IMO). If you’re concerned about hazing, you can always pick ZBT which has no pledging at all.</p>