The skimpy tops are on, the kegs are in, and the front doors to off-campus houses have flung open.

With hormones raging and high school now history, 1,947 newly legal bodies – freshman – are officially on the market. And thanks to them, no matter how much ass everyone says they got over the summer, the seasoned pros know that in the next week they can get a whole lot more.

Welcome to New Student Week: the official kick-off to NU’s mating scene. Like any perennial cycle, the NU sex calendar has its highs and lows, and the extremes are particularly acute for the freshmen. Will you have a yearlong freshman freeze or a romping free-for-all? The answers, dear froshes, lie ahead.

PREDATORS, TINGLY FEELINGS AND THE FACEBOOK

The actual freshman freeze – a university-mandated time when no first-year students are allowed in Greek houses – serves merely as a traffic signal for overzealous frat boys. As one “brother” wishing to remain nameless said, “The older guys are predatory.”

And who can blame them? Frat boys may get a bad rap, but they’re no dummies. They realize that freshmen are without adult supervision for the first time in their young lives. That leads, naturally, to freshmen tending to be pretty sexually active in the first few months of school, if they so desire.

Freshman girls, take heed: You’ll be getting the brunt of the attention. There’s just something about a new crop of girls that always gets the boys’ boxers in a twist. They’ll shower you with invites to house parties, tailgates, even to their own showers, all in an attempt to get you in their beds. The older guys know what they want. Girls, just make sure that you do, too.

Most freshmen courting begins with the freshman facebook. Take a good look at the older guys who line up at Norris for their own copies of the facebook. You gotta steer clear of upperclassmen who spend their first $10 of the school year in a lame attempt to plot out their hookups for the year. Still, you can expect that there will be at least one person who comes up to you and knows your high school hobbies.

A CLEAN SLATE

Truth is, aside from that one weirdo, not many people know you at NU. One of the beauties of freshman year is the clean slate that comes with the new setting. Freshmen are free to reinvent themselves and face no repercussions for doing so. That fact can help bolster your sex life, too. People won’t know about the zit-faced you who couldn’t get a prom date. On the other hand, they also won’t know if you were the hottie who was banging the quarterback of the football team.

“No one is going to fuck you because you were cool in high school,” says Oscar Boyson, a sophomore.

Intimidated? Don’t be. The transitive property of drunk squared means that no one is not going to fuck you because you weren’t cool in high school. Much better.

OK, so you’re fresh out of high school and all its awkwardness. You’re ready to trade in hookups in the backseat of your Volkswagon Passat for the equally snug-fitting NU single beds. Here’s what you need to know.

• Slut means the same thing here that it did at home. Score a succession of home runs, and you’re likely to rack up strikes on that ever-present report card known as reputation.

• One-night stands do happen here, but you’ll soon learn – for better or worse – that most of the sex on campus is being had by folks in somewhat serious relationships.

• The climate for sex rises as the temperature drops. As sophomore and self-proclaimed kissing slut Jennifer Carter notes, Fall Quarter is typically make-out madness. Things tend to heat up during Winter Quarter, when people are looking for a warm body to snuggle up to and a full-out hookup to help quell their desperation.

• Forget your high school sweetheart. For the dozens of freshmen who enter their first years attached to long-distance significant others, only about three will finish the year with the same partner. Don’t believe it? Wait until a few weeks after Christmas break, when the feelings of togetherness get beat out by the realization that you won’t get that long-distance ass again until Spring Break. Then, like clockwork, a slew of high school sweethearts will become college breakups. But don’t take my jaded word for it. “Breaking up with my long-distance girlfriend was the best thing I did last year,” said Matthew Dinneen, a sophomore.

• No matter what they say, their roommate is not sound asleep. Sure, you and your roomie will discuss the visitation rights of the opposite sex early on. But that agreement will get thrown out the window when the circumstances actually pop up. So, choose one now: Have standards and wait for privacy, or justify the voyeurism with a tired excuse. “My roommate doesn’t wake up unless I throw his alarm clock at him. He’ll never hear us.” Or, “I’ve had to listen to my roommate hook up with a different guy every night. It’s only fair that we give her some of her own medicine. C’mon, let’s be loud.”

• The mating scene is what you make of it. Like just about anywhere, some people will talk a big game, and others will say no one gets ass at NU. “If you want to go out and get drunk every night and hook up with random people, that can definitely be done,” sophomore Cait Kuyk said. In the same vein, many longterm romances seem to sprout up each year in unimaginable places.

So, before you head off looking for lust and love at NU, know this: awkward mornings-after do happen. But don’t let the walk of shame turn into a panicked sprint. Freshman year is about figuring things out. So what if you get embarrassed once or twice? Everyone is a freshman once, so live it up. Get your ass up and away from the computer, and go find someone to love.

Hooking up in Passats helps Cassie relive her high school days. Ask her to show you her backseat at c-vinograd@northwestern.edu