The Number Six Club

The following is a list of MIT's fraternities, sororities and independent living groups.

Many MIT fraternities are located in Boston because the Institute was originally located in the Back Bay neighborhood, and had no dormitories to house its students.

MIT moved to its current Cambridge campus in 1916, and newer independent living groups have sprouted up or moved in around it.

From the 1860s through the first half of the 1900s, MIT students were almost entirely male. In the 2000s, the Institute's undergraduate gender ratio reached nearly 50-50. A period of demographic and political change in the 1960s and 1970s, which followed larger national trends, resulted in the conversion of several all-male, nationally affiliated living groups into local co-ed groups, and led to the expansion of all-female and co-ed housing options.

Traditionally, rush at MIT occurred during "Residence/Orientation" (R/O) Week, which was the final week of each summer before the start of the fall semester. All incoming freshmen and transfer students would arrive on campus a week before Registration Day, the official start of the fall semester. During R/O Week, the incoming class would participate in orientation activities, take the so-called "writing test" to attempt to test out of the MIT Writing Requirement, and participate in residence selection. All students were free to participate in fraternity, sorority and independent living group rush. Those students who did not end up in an off-campus living group would also participate in the dorm selection process (see "List of Massachusetts Institute of Technology undergraduate dormitories").

FSILG rush was an intense experience for all involved, cramming the entire process of choosing among dozens of housing options into essentially three days. It always began with an event known as the "Killian Kickoff," held in Killian Court in the middle of campus. MIT's president would deliver a welcoming speech to the incoming class, which always ended with, "Let the rush begin!" Immediately, upperclassmen removed their overshirts to display their letters (an upperclassman wearing anything which identified his or her living group prior to the start of rush was a serious violation of rush rules), and fanned out through the crowd in search of freshmen. For the incoming students, rush was a whirlwind of cookouts, parties and field trips all over the Boston area. For the upperclassmen, it was a marathon of 18-hour days, trying to meet as many freshmen as possible while competing with other living groups for the most popular prospects. For both sides, rush could be stressful, exhausting, and highly emotional. In many ways, rush was a microcosm of the broader MIT experience.

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