<p>I am very fortunate to have been offered admission to Lehigh beginning in January 2014. Lehigh was my top choice school so this was excellent news.</p>
<p>However today i received the official letter which tells me I can not participate in Rush until one full year at Lehigh.</p>
<p>I guess the school wants to be sure that we focus on academics and can meet the minimum standards for rush. Understandable…</p>
<p>At the same time, the Lehigh fraternity experience is one of the high points when people talk about the school. I know there are plenty of threads about social options outside of frats but this is one of the many check marks that I found appealing about Lehigh.</p>
<p>Can anyone comment on their experience or their kids experiences with rushing as a soph?</p>
<p>My daughter rushed as a sophomore and all went great. I actually believe that she got more out of it waiting. Freshman year is so busy, there is so much to adjust to. I feel to many freshman are so worried about rushing in January that grades or other friendships suffer. I have a question, does the letter actually say one year? I thought you can rush as long as you have 12 Lehigh credits which would be after your first semester and I do know that at least one sorority is rushing in the fall plus a new sorority might be coming on campus in the fall. I believe you won’t be disappointed if you wait unit next January to rush, it will still be the same experience. Good Luck.</p>
<p>there is a way to rush your freshman year if you want, it is called ghosting
kids with citations, bad grades, or transfers can go through the pledging process and be recognized by the brothers as a member but not by the school. You can live in the house the following year as a boarder and be officially recognized by the school as a brother when your sophomore year of pledges is initiated. The fraternities take some risk when doing this, but in the last year the university increased the rules for rushing a fraternity so the amount of ghosts also increased. That being said because of this risk it is harder to ghost. If the fraternity already has a solid pledge class they are happy with they might not except you, but if you already know someone in the fraternity, or if that fraternity needs to increase there numbers, ghosting is fairly easy.</p>
<p>Fraternities usually do fall and spring rush, and a lot of people wait until their second year at university because pledging a fraternity can really be a time consumer. I wouldn’t worry.</p>
<p>@kanick, thank you for your information. If my son decides to Rush, he planned on doing it his second year as a sophomore. Glad to hear many others that start in fall feel the same.</p>