<p>Donemom notes,"Princeton has the least number of Jewish students among the ivies"</p>
<p>Response: It is interesting that you noted that statistic. I remember my dad telling me, in response to my askiing about being a potential student at Princeton, that Princeton has been known among Jews as being the most discriminatory of all the ivys, especially against Jews. I wonder if this is still true today?</p>
<p>cookiemom, great article.
Looks a little like Nazis running the show...j1..j2...j3..</p>
<p>Marite,</p>
<p>True enough, they may not know with 100% certainty about your son. Though, statistically they may be able to make an inference. I believe that the enrollment management software is built around those statistical inferences. The examples you cite may be exceptions or the reasons why they do not know with 100% certainty.</p>
<p>I recall reading about the counselor who changed his name from Chau to Shaw. His objective was like those from generations before us, to be more appealing to the adcoms at particular schools. Thus the question on the 1922 Harvard application about a name change and why. Those questions are not directly anymore though they may be answered through those statistical inferences.</p>
<p>Eagle:</p>
<p>You are right about inference. I just think that statistical inferences will be harder to make because of trends within society. It used to be that only Catholics went to Catholic schools; white parents had white children, etc... But that is no longer true, at least in certain parts of the country. I went to a Dragon Boat festival on the Charles one year and saw a large group of white parents with Asian babies. Another of S's friends is easily recognizable as a Jew because of her last name (and she is also devout); she also happens to be African-American. Diversity brings unpredictability.</p>
<p>Marite,</p>
<p>That is why I am looking more at the trend instead of the instances my self. I guess my point is that there are vestiges of some of this still in play. For example, if the enrollment management software shows that students from Catholic high schools go to ND, Georgetown, BC, Holy Cross, etc then certain schools may reject those students because it would negatively impact thier yield. On the positive side of this, if you are a student at a Catholic high school you would get a benefit from the same inference at a Catholic college using the same enrollment management package.</p>
<p>I only bring this up because it may keep us slaves of our pasts. Though as noted before I am hopeful because the trend is in the right direction.</p>
<p>I think (but will never know) the reason we only have athletes among HYPS attendees from my area is income. Virtually everyone is in the $50k-$100k category, which makes them very expensive to enroll, there are NO legacies, and they bring nothing to the table that a 4.0, 1600 SAT who fences couldn't. What possible prestige can result (on the whole) from accepting a middle class kid? More prestige actually results from rejecting them. And it's not like we are feeder territory (even if we are the state capital.)</p>
<p>That was an interesting article. I remember my grandmother (Smith 1911) telling me about how Dartmouth was the most welcoming of jewish boys. I don't know if she was right about that. I always thought of Columbia, Cornell and Penn.</p>
<p>Eagle:</p>
<p>I think I follow your line of reasoning. But it may be different from the bias argument (against Jews, Catholics, Asians, etc...) and have more to do with perceived "Tufts syndrome."<br>
If some students are assumed to be more likely to go elsewhere, why admit them? If students from Catholic high schools are more likely to go to BC, G'town, Holy Cross, ND, are they less likely to be admitted at, say Bowdoin, Clark, etc..? What would this about the latter? Prejudice or prudence?</p>
<p>Quote from article: Bender, Karabel tells us, believed that if Harvard continued to suffer on the football field it would contribute to the schools reputation as a place with no college spirit, few good fellows, and no vigorous, healthy social life, not to mention a surfeit of pansies, decadent esthetes and precious sophisticates. hmmmmm sounds like Harvard to me- LOL! Just kidding all you Harvard Alums!</p>
<p>Marite,</p>
<p>Prejudice or Prudence, I don't know. That is why I describe it as benign exclusion of certain groups. The trouble is that we may be substituting statistical discrimination for actual discrimination. Because of the roots and tendancies of certain populations we may continue to foster that tendancy statistically instead of overtly.</p>
<p>I think it would be useful to compare rates of admission against rates of application (all other things being equal, of course). I would assume that more Catholics would apply to ND than Brandeis and more Jews to apply to Brandeis than ND. In neither case would discrimination be at work if there were more Catholics at ND and more Jews at Brandeis.</p>
<p>I would hesitate to label the lack of Jews at ND, say, as "exclusion," whether benign of malicious, if it could be shown that no Jew had applied. Exclusion is proactive. Absence would be more accurate. But ascribing a cause for such an absence is more difficult.</p>
<p>It has, however, been suggested that some colleges can signal their preferences for certain groups by emphasizing certain characteristics. For example, the preference for certain kinds of sports and other ECs that are available only to certain socio-economic groups or to suburban kids. Supposedly, the previous dean of admission at Princeton had a preference for student-athletes which disadvantaged urban students such as those who went to Stuyvesant. This year, with a new dean who made a point of going to Stuy, Princeton admitted a significant number of students from Stuy. It was Harvard who admitted very few. Why, I do not know.</p>
<p>Interesting question, taxguy, altho I wasn't implying that. It's more that I think that certain schools develop certain cultures, and that Princeton's may just not draw as many Jewish students, whereas most of the other ivies seem to. By the way, I can't remember which Jewish organization I got my data from last year...
Cookiemom, where'd you get yours?</p>
<p>Doesn't Princeton also require pictures of each applicant? I've heard people say that almost everyone at Princeton is "hot," which may be yet another (subtle) aspect of their brand - and make P a more desirable school. </p>
<p>IMO, for many people (myself included), "diversity" is a HUGE draw to colleges. I went to my alma mater (and loved it) because I met people who were so different from the white Catholics that I grew up with. Want to make your school more desirable? Admit lots of different types of people (first generation, parents never been to college, lived abroad, minorities, etc), and the white kids will be fighting over the remaining seats.</p>
<p>aries,
The P photos are due some time after accepted students send in their enrollment agreements.</p>
<p>The University of Washington has just announce it has changed its admission policy to be more like the privates: <a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/education/2002542775_admissions06m.html%5B/url%5D">http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/education/2002542775_admissions06m.html</a>, looks like they want to have more control over what the student body "looks" like as well.</p>
<p>I can tell you one thing: I have been a national magazine acquisitions editor in NYC for more than 20 years, and in that time writers from the Ivies, writers from no-name colleges, and writers with no college at all have come my way trying to sell their stories and make it on the writing stage. Ivy graduates are no better at magazine writing than anyone else, and often (like others) shockingly bad. As a matter of practicality, in selecting writers I have learned to ignore the undergraduate degree or institution completely and pay attention only to the quality of the writing clip and the talent of the writer; I have found no correlation whatsoever between writing talent and Ivy, at all.</p>
<p>I realize these degress are important to some people, and these graduates valued more by some --but in my field of national magazine journalism here at ground zero for the field in New York City, no one who has any experience pays any heed at all to the fact that someone may have an Ivy degree. </p>
<p>This article explains why: In all the admissions machinations, none of these adcoms have been selecting for writing talent, at all.</p>
<p>Wake Forest still requires a picture if you use their application.</p>
<p>Some of the best writers I know went to LAC's like Kenyon.</p>
<p>I got my stats on Jewish population at Harvard (29%) from an editorial in the Boston Globe last year. The editorial was mainly about Brandeis which was established as "the Jewish Harvard" during the Ivy quota years. Quoting the percentage of Jewish students at Harvard today the author noted: "Brandeis used to be known as the Jewish Harvard. Now Harvard is the Jewish Harvard."</p>
<p>As for Princeton these days, I agree with Marite that the new dean is trying to turn things around. I saw a number of kids sporting Stuy T-shirts during freshman orientation. Two of my S's roommates are Jewish, I'll ask them if they know anything about the currents stats there. I know they have a kosher dining hall that's available to everyone and the food is supposed to be quite good.</p>
<p>Princeton does not ask for a picture in the application, but Brown does. Princeton only asks for pictures once you've matriculated.</p>
<p>My favorite quote from the article is:</p>
<p>"If you let in only the brilliant, then you produced bookworms and bench scientists: you ended up as socially irrelevant as the University of Chicago."</p>