Does religious involvement truly= higher chances of admission to competitive schools?

Applying to College
1

Greetings,

I am someone who is deeply invested in faith, and have been a practicing Orthodox Jew for pretty much my whole life. I recently had a ritual conferred upon me known as “confirmation” (common in Reform temples but also practiced in higher temples such as my own, and is very similar to the Christian practice. In fact, it was created in part to help Jews become more “American” in the everlasting ethnic struggle of our people).

I had been told by many in my shul that this practice is something that stands out IMMENSELY to competitive colleges, as it differentiates you from other applicants of the same faith (of which there are many).

So fellow faith-based souls (and even those that are not), please help me answer this question with thorough research or personal experience: Does deep religious piety or involvement REALLY set you apart from other applicants?

Thank you in advance.

2

Maybe your friends can point you towards an actual study which would confirm their theories on religious practice and admission.

3

Several clergymen had told me this. One had said it’s something the Ivies definitely look for in Jewish (and I’m sure other faiths) applicants. @JustOneDad

4

I don’t really think that being Orthodox and going through a particular ritual will make you IMMENSELY more attractive to competitive colleges.

5

It may be of interest to faith based colleges, like Catholic colleges that consider faith and ‘spirituality’, and of course, any Jewish affiliated colleges.

6

A lot of Orthodox Jews have brilliant minds and get in on their academic qualifications and not their religious piety. I I’m from New York and this definitely sounds like a contrived admissions theory to me! Bottom line is you are not deeply religious because you want to get into a top tier school.

7

I live on Long Island which has a high Jewish population and I don’t know of anyone who has put a religious confirmation on their college resume. Now if in order to complete their confirmation you tutored children, taught classes, did community service or fund raising, then I would put any or all of those activities on your resume.

8

Don’t most elite colleges have a bias against really religious people as it is often equated with conservative cultural & political leanings?

9

Definitely not. There are many “really religious people” at every elite college.

10

Nope, not ime. Religious is fine. But OP, through several threads, is showing considerable naïveté. Not something top colleges are impressed by.

Or he’s kidding.

11

No. And certainly not “IMMENSELY” - there are v v few things that set anybody apart immensely. Winning Intel does. I can’t think that it would help any more than the Girl Scout Gold/Boy Scout Eagle award.

12

“had been told by many in my shul that this practice is something that stands out IMMENSELY to competitive colleges, as it differentiates you from other applicants of the same faith (of which there are many).”

Not even remotely. These folks are kidding themselves. Now if you did service work related to this, there might be something to it. But why any college would care that a student became a bar mitzvah, was confirmed, etc – no, just no. They simply did something that was expected of them.

13

I’ve just read another post where you’re looking for a different “hook” to shortcut college admissions.

For what it’s worth, every single one of the 2500 kids in my school, and every single one of the 1600 in my husband’s school, have all been Confirmed in the Catholic church. No one in college admissions, even in the Catholic colleges, cares. That’s not why they did it, and it won’t make a bit of difference in terms of college admissions.

Let’s read about your SATs, your GPA, your extra curriculars. What do you hope to major in?

Why not simply compile a list of schools that are a good fit for who you are??? Stop trying to shortcut the process and find the school that’s right for you.

14

@codemachine
You want a killer hook for getting admitted into a competitive school? Get your parents to donate a $40 million new academic building.

15

I think this is the problem:

When you first joined CC, you probably started with the “College Admissions” or the “College Search” forums.

You read about two kinds of kids: Superstudents, with GPAs of well over 4 and SATs in the high 2300s, and “other” students-- all of whom had some sort of “Hook” that would get them admitted into the school of their choice. Then you read a couple of “chance me” threads, and saw more Superhumans, humbly asking whether their GPA of 3.99 and their leadership in 12 or 13 different activities would relegate them to fast food work for the rest of their lives.

In the meantime, you’re merely mortal. Your grades are good, your SATs are good, your activities are good. But you’re merely mortal. You don’t have the Superhuman capabilities that are so very prevalent here on CC.

So if Plan A won’t work, then you’re going for Plan B: trying to find that elusive “hook” I keep reading about, the one that will have admissions counselors banging at your door, trying to get you to please consider their schools.

How am I doing?? Pretty close??

The reality is that CC doesn’t begin to describe the normal approach to college admissions. The typical high school kid has average grades-- and HALF of the student body falls into the dreaded “bottom 50%” of his/her class. He or she has a couple of activities, but not a whole lot of leadership. And those ECs are guided by his or her interests, not with an eye towards college admissions… they’re what a lot of kids here would consider “weak ECs.”

This site is a magnificent resource for looking for schools, but it has some glaring weaknesses-- it doesn’t deal well with kids who are merely mortal. It can be hard to find positive, concrete info for students who aren’t Honor Roll, NHS, IB, AP, top 5% of their class.

That doesn’t mean the site isn’t magnificent, simply that it may not fulfill all your college search needs.

Here’s how we found a list of schools for my merely mortal son:

  • We knew his major, his PSAT (at that point) scores, and had a ballpark radius of about 200 miles-- roughly a 3 hour drive from our home on Long Island. That covers roughly from Boston to Baltimore to Scranton. We’re both teachers, and have 2 younger daughters, so the cost is also a prime consideration.
  • We used the College Match features on a number of different sites. I googled "colleges with Sports Management" and added to the list. There are a bunch of sites that include lots of college data; they're easy to google. . I looked at State Universities in NY and all the surrounding states. We ended up with a huge list of schools. I put them onto a Table, with columns for price, distance, size, 25th percentile SAT in math, verbal and written...you name it.
  • Anything that looked reasonable made it onto his "schools I'm considering" list on Naviance. That way we could compare his grades with others from his school that had applied there, and it made access to their websites easy to find. That list is ginormous, but that's OK. (I wish I could figure out how to omit schools, but it's not a huge deal.)
  • Looking at those websites narrowed down our list a bit. So did visiting schools... we realized that he wants a smaller school, so that cut some out. We looked at internships, that cut some out.
  • one of the sites has concrete info on "Institutional scholarships" and the percent of the student body that receives it. I figure that if 98% of the student body gets one, my son will probably as well, and we can probably deduct it from the tuition. So we've included a number of schools that, at first glance, appear to be out of our price range. When the financial aid packages come next spring, we'll see.

We’re down to a list of about a dozen schools, 4 of which we’ve seen since October. (It was a rough winter, so we didn’t get as much done as I would have hoped. Plus, he absolutely HATES shopping, and visiting schools is glorified shopping in his book. So I need to spread them out.) When he took the SATs in May, we sent his scores to the schools he’s most likely to be admitted to. When he takes them again in October, he’ll include the rest.

Why not consider an approach kind of like that one? Stop looking for a hook, and start looking at schools that will be a good fit for you.

16

Actually not accurate at all. No where did I mention I was looking for a “hook”, merely advice on how college admissions officers could read and weigh certain things on my application. It seems the point of this thread has been bypassed. Yes, community service, tutoring, and immersion into a more religious lifestyle were factors required for my confirmation. Even so, my other EC’s and academic standing supersede this, I just wanted an opinion.

17

I didn’t ask who told you this; it’s not a surprise to me what the source was. I hope you can understand how clergy might have a certain self interest in propagating this. What I asked was if they could provide you a study or something substantially more objective in it’s examination of the question.

18

Colleges want to see accomplished applicants but they need to see what led to these accomplishments. Seeing what you did for the confirmation and why you wanted to be confirmed are what the colleges want to know. Just saying that you’re religious and were confirmed isn’t so interesting.

19

My apologies.

The best of luck to you.

20

I don’t think so because that would be a micro aggression toward non religious people.