My child toured WPI today and loved it. He forgot to ask about Greek life because he has no interest in it at all. Any idea of what percentage of students belong to the Greek system? Thanks!
It looks like it is about 30%, but it doesn’t dominate the social scene. My son is a freshman there and, while he knows people in fraternities and sororities, he doesn’t feel like it is a big deal. There are tons of clubs of various kinds. There are club and varsity sports. Most people find one or more groups that they enjoy and make connections there.
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If you don’t mind me asking, how does your son like WPI? We are considering it for my son to apply to next year, but am worried about the pace with the 7 week semesters. WPI gets lower scores than most for work manageability on Niche. Just curious. My son has had a lot of academic stress in high school and concerned about 4 more years of intense stress.
There are kids it works for and kids it doesn’t work for. My S23 has always been a very quick learner. He doesn’t have a lot of stamina for long semesters, and he struggles to juggle to many different priorities at once. WPI is a perfect fit for him. But even with that, 4th quarter was hard this year and he was fairly burned out by the last day (yesterday). He isn’t sure if he passed 2 of his classes. 
(He said that other quarters also though and has gotten 6 As and 2Bs, so we’ll see.
Not passing the occasional class seems to be really normal at WPI? Parents on the parent FB group act like pretty much everyone has failed (No Record — it doesn’t go on the transcript) at least one class.
WPI would be a disaster for my S24. He is really smart, but he often takes a few weeks to warm up to new topics and learn a new teacher’s system.
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Just a comment that when my son was looking at colleges, he fell in love with WPI and determined it was his top choice. After much deliberation before choosing where he would go, he determined the 7 week semesters were not a good fit for him. My son is a very hard, but slow and methodical worker who likes to really dig in to learn material. So that (and the price tag!) made him choose elsewhere. Some students seem to thrive under those conditions. I think it would have been a bad fit for my son. Each person is different.
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My daughter went to WPI and liked the 7-week terms. You take fewer classes per term and so can really dig into a subject. One great benefit for the 7-week terms was the weeklong break between terms with no homework so one could totally relax. I recall many a spring break with a ton of homework as the professor used the break time to catch up on the syllabus.
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