<p>Okay, I have a bunch of questions about the greek life at Stanford...</p>
<p>Is the greek life at Stanford huge? What does it take to join a frat/sorority? When is rush period? Can you join as a freshman? Do frats/sororities get their own dorms? Can you join a frat/sorority but live in some other dorms? Can you do SLE/Frosoco while also joining a frat/sorority?</p>
<p>Thanks for any replies. :-)</p>
<p>I think about 20% of students are in greek life. It doesn't seem like there are that many, but that's probably in large part because of the existence of unhoused frats/sororities. If you want to be a part of it you totally can. If you don't you don't have to. Most of the big parties are held by frats, but anyone can go to the parties. Rush period is early spring quarter. You can't be in frat/sorority as a freshman, which I think is smart. You get time to get settled and decide if greek life is for you. This means you can do SLE/Frosoco and still get involved in greek life. Some of the frats/sororities are housed, some are not.</p>
<p>Few of the sororities are housed; I think only two or something. More of the fraternities are housed. In addition, the sororities are housed off campus while the fraternities are housed pretty much near the center of campus on "The Row." The Row is where most of the houses (as opposed to dorms), Greek and non-Greek alike, are located and where most of the campus party life is. For the purposes of simplification, I'm just going to refer to fraternities from now on, but the same principles apply to sororities as well. Anyway, you can be in a fraternity and still live elsewhere, but how easy/likely this is depends on your fraternity. I don't know if your question about FSC/SLE was because you thought freshmen could join fraternities immediately, but you have to wait until spring quarter, like marlgirl said. If your question was because you're worried about any rumours of crazy workloads, don't worry about them. FSC (where I live) does not have a greater workload than anywhere else. I can't speak for SLE, but I know plenty of FroSoCoans and people in SLE who have joined a fraternity. </p>
<p>Joining a fraternity starts with rush, during which time potential pledges and active members socialize and decide if they're right for each other. Then the fraternity extends "bids" to the people they like. The people who accept these bids begin the pledging process, which involves further bonding with your new brothers, education and tests about your fraternity's history, and may involve hazing depending on which fraternity you're pledging. Let me know if you have any more questions about specific fraternities/sororities, etc.!</p>
<p>The sororities are actually on campus, just not on the row. The sorority rush process is a bit different than the fraternity process, a bit more artificial it seems. Rush isn't until spring quarter so you have a while to learn about it once you get to campus and see of greek life is for you.</p>
<p>Whoops, you're right, marlgirl. The sororities seem close enough to me to the edge of campus that I just think of them as off-campus (I rarely am on East Campus).</p>
<p>The Frats are also quite varied from more academic to hardcore partiers.</p>