<p>How much do the frats control social life at Dartmouth? I know about 30% of guys are in frats. Does this affect your ability to make friends at Dartmouth? And if you don’t join a frat, what are the housing choices you have to help make friends?</p>
<p>yes frats control the social scene…they are a place to hang out, but it doesnt affect making friends at all…most ppl make friends with ppl on their doc trip/section, floormates/dormmates, and ppl on their team or organization…u dont pledge frats until sophomore year so by then u have an established group of friends</p>
<p>As a side note: While frats are the main source of social life, there are other options if you look for them. East wheelock stands as an example of a cluster with ample alternative things going on. And don’t be immediately turned off by the idea of frats. Coming in I would never of thought I’d set foot in a frat, I’ve not found a few places I really enjoy and have like-minded people. There’s a greek space for about everyone here. :)</p>
<p>I really don’t think that frats “run” the social show. I mean, you’ll find me in a frat basement every Friday and Saturday night, but I consider that only very small portion of what I do here and how I socialize with other students. I have met more people and made closer relationships outside of frats.</p>
<p>There are basically two times in your Dartmouth career when you will make a lot of new friends. The first is freshman fall.The second is pledge term. If you skip pledge term, you skip the opportunity to make a lot of new friends. You also miss the stream of new friends as future pledge classes join the house when you become an upperclassman. As a result, there is a great deal of implicit pressure to rush.</p>
<p>You will do just fine not being in a Greek house. But you won’t have the full Dartmouth experience, and you will have to be a lot more proactive in making friends than you would be if you were in a Greek house.</p>
<p>One thing to note is that Dartmouth frats are not anywhere as exclusive as the stereotypical frat. Most frats have open parties, and even when there’s no party, on weeknights usually anyone can go into the basement and play pong. There’s no real douchy hard-on pressure to rush a Greek house. But I’d say there’s a fair amount of implicit pressure to participate in the Greek system.</p>
<p>There is an alternative, I might add – a lot of people who live in the East Wheelock Cluster often constitute an enclave of sorts from the rest of campus. They’re mostly nerdy and a bit anti-social, though often good kids. I think being a consistent East Wheelock resident is kind of like being in a very weird, nerdy Greek house, without the hazing or the miscellaneous weirdness which our nerdy frats get up to.</p>
<p>If none of these options enthuse you, you probably won’t have as much fun socializing at Dartmouth as most Dartmouth kids do. But, you’ll still have fun either way (unless you somehow mess up freshman fall, which is pretty hard to do).</p>
<p>I don’t understand how frats can truly be said to “dominate” social life if 70% of guys choose not to join one.</p>
<p>Obviously the vast majority of students are managing to have a social life without being a frat member.</p>
<p>25% of guys are ineligible for rush because they’re freshmen. About 60% of the eligible students are in a fraternity, sorority, or co-ed Greek house. The influence of the Greeks on the social scene is difficult to underestimate. People hang out in frats, not in dorms, especially after freshman year. The main social event of any night is almost always something in a frat. Events at the Hop and things of that sort are almost always a mere blip on students’ radar. Upperclass students identify themselves by their Greek house.</p>
<p>i feel like johnleemk is painting a picture a bit bleaker than it really is. also, it’s more like 60-70% of the eligible student body is affiliated … they take the stats in the fall, so the sophomores haven’t rushed yet and obviously freshmen are not allowed to be affiliated, so … we get figures like 30%.</p>
<p>anyway, there are more than enough ways to make a lot of friends at Dartmouth without belonging to a greek house. Yes, you meet a lot of ppl during pledge term, but I wouldn’t necessarily say you make a lot of friends during that term except w/ kids you are pledging with … who, for the most part, you will already know prior to rushing, you might just get to know them better. I would say you are much more likely to make new friends during your sophomore summer.</p>
<p>that being said, the greek scene does dominate ORGANIZED campus social life, and people’s partying in general, especially for freshmen and to some extent, sophomores. And to the extent that upperclassmen identify themselves by their greek house … that’s true, kind of. It’s rarely what people are most likely to describe themselves as, it’s more that greek houses are how we tend to label people here. Upperclassmen tend to be identified by their greek house. They tend to identify themselves by their other activities, which usually are more important to them.</p>
<p>When is pledge term?</p>
<p>Gotta agree with johnleemk, except for the “you will do just fine not being in a Greek house” part.</p>
<p>frats dominate the social life for sure, and there are good and bad parts to this, although the vast majority of people i’ve talked to have had great experiences in dartmouth frats. they certainly are nothing like frats at other colleges.</p>
<p>From my uncle who is an alum the answer is most definitely yep!</p>
<p>When is pledge term??</p>
<p>Pledge term is the term directly after you have joined a fratenity or sorority. During this time you are a member of the house but not quite a full member. You are often expected to do various things, typically funny/ crazy activities that will (at least in theory) bond you to your house and the fellow members of you pledge class. Of course the obvious danger is when these activities border on hazing. (However, Dartmouth does have strong sanctions regarding hazing when it is brought to its attention) As a freshman I can’t comment on how hard/ easy pledge term is but I hear it varies a lot by house.</p>
<p>FYI
You cannot pledge until Sophomore year so typically your pledge term will be in your Sophomore fall if you decide to rush a house and are following a “typical” (not that there is a really typical) D-Plan.</p>
<p>Can students pledge any term during sophomore year?</p>
<p>Students can pledge any term beginning with their sophomore fall. You could pledge senior spring if you really wanted to.</p>
<p>Everyone here has done a pretty good job of conveying how frats fit into the social scene at dartmouth. </p>
<p>You have to understand that when these people tell you there is a different frat for everyone, there really is. Houses get the reputations that they do because people like to organize themselves with people who have similar personality traits as them. There is even a frat now that prohibits alcohol in its building (Beta). </p>
<p>Joining a frat gives you access to a new group of people that you might not have otherwise met, but more importantly it gives you a place to go on a tuesday night if you’re trying to blow off some steam. As the others have mentioned, most frat parties on weekends are open to the entire campus and no one will ever say anything to you if you go and aren’t a member or even dont know any of the members; it would be really hard for them to single you out because there are so many people there.</p>
<p>But on the nights when frats aren’t throwing campus-wide parties if you’re not in a frat but you want to drink you’ll find that you’ll need to get one of your friends who is in a frat to help you out. As you get towards the end of your career there, playing pong on an off night with close friends is one of the more fun things to do (the campus-wide parties are dominated by the lower classes and can get annoying once the novelty of being around a ton of sexually charged kids wears off a bit towards the end). Not being in a frat makes this difficult; though not impossible since you’ll have friends in frats even if you decide not to join one.</p>
<p>Of course this only applies to the guys out there. If you’re a girl you’ll have a much easier time with things. Guys in frats are much more receptive to random girls walking into their house on an off night than they are random guys for obvious reasons. So if you don’t join a sorority and still want to play some pong that won’t be an issue. </p>
<p>Also, if you do join a sorority its much more like just joining some other kind of group since from what i heard pledge term doesnt involve any hazing, and unless you join KDE you generally dont throw campus wide parties. Which means you’ll be going to the frats to drink and socialize anyways. The nice thing about being in a sorority is that youll have a big group of girls to hang out with, without the pressures to drink that you get in a frat.</p>
<p>Are there any up-to-date descriptions of the frats and sororities–and aren’t there some other houses too? There’s an old one on Ivygate, but it doesn’t include some places.</p>
<p>There was one posted in the freshman issue of the D this year. You might be able to find it by digging around in the archives on [TheDartmouth.com</a> | America’s Oldest College Newspaper. Founded 1799.](<a href=“http://www.thedartmouth.com%5DTheDartmouth.com”>http://www.thedartmouth.com)</p>