What To Expect If You Get Punched:

• Your life will be ruined. Temporarily. Your relationship will end, you will be blackballed, your friendships and blocking group will be torn apart, and your internal discussion list will be printed in the Crimson. But losing everything is how you show commitment.
• Your schedule will be packed. Clubs hold three to four rounds, each marked by a punch event. They kick off in October, and elections fall on the Sunday before the Harvard-Yale game. Often 100-plus kids are invited to the first round, whereas clubs eventually elect 25 or so members. Some events come straight out of a tweedier version of Animal House: passing bottles of Goldschlager around schoolbuses; doing keg stands on the lawns of countryside estates; receiving lap dances after the second round.
• You will feel incredibly conflicted. Ha! Right. Sad as it is, there isn't much ambivalence. Guys really, really want to get in. (Actually, if you want to feel conflicted, get this: Not one of the eight male clubs has complied with the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. Did you shake your head at the injustice of a disabled classmate being stuck in the Quad? Well, guess what: He won't even get punched.)

What to expect if you are...

• Elected: Bliss. A job at the investment bank of your choice, a million dollars, a hot girlfriend, unlimited happiness, and endless social and professional success. Really, honest!
• Not elected: Your spirit will be crushed. Franklin Delano Roosevelt said that not getting into the Porcellian was the greatest disappointment of his life. And he had polio.

What's The Truth About Punch Season?

• Truth A: Getting elected is mostly a function of being fun and friendly. If the members enjoy spending time with you, they will want to keep spending time with you by electing you. Who believes this? The elected; the naive.
• Truth B: Getting elected is exclusively a function of being rich and beautiful. If you buy drinks for the members at Daedalus, they will fly you to Montreal, London or New York the weekend before final dinner. You can only be elected if you went to a handful of boarding schools or Manhattan day schools. Who believes this? The non-elected; the realists.
• Truth C: Getting elected means perpetuating an outdated, elitist, exclusive and sexist system. They promote inequality and are a stain on Harvard's otherwise enlightened campus. Who believes this? Progressives; WOOF.

Who Wins?

• About 15 percent of the male student body belongs to a final club...
• Thirty percent doesn't even know about them...
• And 30 percent doesn't really care.
• That leaves 25 percent feeling excluded, embittered, and thus compelled to buy into the tradition that they, like FDR, came so close to joining.

Part I: Warning: The Following is Rated H For Harvard
Part II: Meet the Players

The eight male final clubs dominate Harvard's social scene, each with its own quirks, stereotypes and rumored rituals. A quick rundown:

1. The Porcellian: Certainly the clubbiest and final-est of the final clubs, "the Porc" is also the oldest -- and more than a little upset that it's not 1850. A "Z-list" mecca, its dwindling membership is now limited to closeted rowers and purebred clotheshorses.
2. The Fly: One Park Avenue address in your family will suffice, but more Manhattan bona fides won't hurt. Flipped collar -- and no, it's not ironic -- preferable. Why are they so into I-banking when they have this much money already?
3. The AD: Lacrosse players abound, and freshman girls used to -- before the graduate board shut down their parties. It's a shame, because the house is just that beautiful. Punchees have to down a pitcher of beer at the first-round event.
4. The Delphic: Must be a member of soccer or baseball team, or have affinity for dirty, dark, crowded spaces. Otherwise, being heir to an I-banking powerhouse will do. Not a place to go if you are a girl who doesn't like getting touched by boys. Their tiny back-fence guest entrance does a fine job of keeping out unshapely guests.
5. The Owl: Rugby/football/hockey team membership and knowledge of 420 preferred. Ability to boot and rally a must. Like Uncle Lennie (wait, have we made this joke before?), kinda big and dumb, but harmless.
6. The Phoenix: Home of the large, the black, and the occasionally foreign, the PSK knows how to throw down. If their gratuitous shots make you throw up, they have a handful of empty bedrooms waiting just for you, baby, upstairs.
7. The Spee: Must have international passport and other Eurotrash documentation in order, plus access to nearby drug dealers. The most open of the clubs to guests. Jack and Bobby Kennedy belonged here, but alumni relations are so shoddy the Spee may not actually know they're dead yet.
8. The Fox: Mild obsession with interior decorating (their building is in a constant state of remodeling). Membership in at least one a cappella group helps.

Then there are two female final clubs:

1. The Bee: Wealthy, sporty and put together -- and now they have their own house! We think. They're renting from one of the male clubs, the concept of which is about as cool as leprosy at Harvard.
2. The Isis: The Bee's B-list. Still recovering from 2005 "Isis crisis," when the club's catty "punch book" was made public.

The supporting cast:

• The Hasty Pudding: Not to be confused with the pun-happy theatrical group. The Pudding is a special case: it's co-ed and punches members from every class. Most male members of the Pudding also belong to a final club, and the males elected as freshmen are leading contenders in the sophomore punch. (They'll likely be punched by five to eight clubs, whereas the average sophomore male might be punched by between one and three.)
• Other groups include the Seneca (similar to a female final club, only it doesn't punch), Sabliere, Pleiades, the Signet, and the frats and sororities.

Part I: Warning: The Following is Rated H For Harvard
Part III: Why You'll Hate Yourself in the Morning

You'd think that at a progressive-minded institution like Harvard, the symbols of pre-WWII masculist inheritocracy would be long abolished, or at least neatly swept under the rug.

Nope. Harvard's social Rosh Hashana arrives in October with "punch season," a frenzy of schmoozing, flattery and backstabbing that, for a lucky few, results in election to one of Harvard's selective "final clubs."

Quick translation for non-Harvard kids: Final clubs aren't quite like Princeton's eating clubs, though members may eat there. They're not quite like Yale's secret societies, though they are secretive. They're not quite like Dartmouth's frats, though they're essential to the party scene. Their privately owned clubhouses range from sweet to jaw-dropping. Thirty years after Harvard went co-ed, they remain single-sex. And most importantly, while you can "comp," or pledge, publications like the Lampoon or the Advocate, final clubs come to you.

Why do we care about punch? Think of it this way: the entire process, from the scandal to the secrecy to the backlash, encapsulates everything we love and hate about the Ivies. We plan to follow the process closely this year, starting with this here textbook-length primer: the IvyGate Guide to Punch Season.

Click below for more (links go live in 30 minutes). Alternatively, tell yourself you're above this sort of elitist crap, and then click.

Part II: Meet the Players
Part III: Why You'll Hate Yourself in the Morning