One year's worth of AP credits affect rushing?

[aephi alum]

My school doesn't have deferred recruitment, nor are there different rules for freshmen vs. older students other than that freshmen must live in the dorms, not a fraternity or sorority house.

The school does stipulate that, unless you've transferred from a 2- or 4-year school, during your first semester you are a freshman no matter how many AP/IB credits you might have. At the beginning of your second semester, if you have enough credits for a full year (between AP/IB credits and what you earned in the fall), you can take sophomore standing. The only benefit to this is that you can declare a major. When I was in school, hardly anyone did so - at the time, freshmen were on pass/no record for the full year, meaning that if you got an A, B, or C, your transcript read "pass", and if you got a D or an F, there was no record you'd ever taken the class. So, if you didn't take sophomore standing and you bombed a class during your second semester, it wouldn't hurt your GPA. If you did take sophomore standing and then bombed a class and then wanted to rush that fall, you might find your GPA was too low.