Hey guys, I've been stuck in my head about this the past week without much guidance beyond speaking to all the frat bros and I'm looking for some advice.

I'm an older junior (just transferred, I'm 24; looking at 3 years due to engineering) and want to join a frat for the social aspect -- solid brotherhood, possibility of connections and of course parties. Three of the four top houses (read: best parties) have given me a bid as well as another, very new and small house (which seems to have some great business and leadership connections).

However, I'm not looking to put up with the common conception of frat pledging -- degrading bullshit for the sake of amusing the house brothers. I'm all about hard work (I lift and stay active and didn't choose my major to slack off) but I've got too much self-respect to deal with some of the petty bullshit I'm concerned is going to go down my first semester.

All that said, I can't tell whether I'm taking it too seriously (how bad could one semester of degrading bullshit be for 2 1/2 years of good relations) or if I should skip the top houses/best parties in favor of probable career/resume boosts in the lesser houses that are less likely to have these degrading initiations.

For the record, my campus is anti-hazing, but we all know how groups of guys are.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.