<p>I think the issue of underrepresentation can perpetually inflate.<br>
In my grad student dorm, the number of left-handeds was exceptionally large. Some joked they must be smarter (to be in grad school,) some said there must have been some attempt, in reviewing their (handwritten) apps to identify the lefties and give 'em extra points, righties be damned. And, some suggested left-handed grad students were less able to live on their own, find an apt, manage the responsibilities.</p>
<p>And, yes, the data was anecdotal. Or maybe some variant on self-reported, cuz they chose to write in front of another or answer truthfully, not mask their reality.</p>
<p>True, but I’ve always been puzzled by Northwestern. It’s not on the Eastern Seaboard, yet vast chunks of it are named after Jews, who were presumably either major donors or distinguished faculty/administrators. The Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and the Feinberg School of Medicine come to mind.</p>
<p>True, but you don’t donate that kind of money unless you have a connection to the university, and you’re unlikely to have a connection to a university that doesn’t serve members of your ethnic group.</p>
<p>I think Marian has it figured out. Non-Jewish whites are simply stupider. Which means all us non-Jewish whites need to band together and demand affirmitive action at Harvard and Yale. Non-Jewish Whites must represent their representation in America which is 62%. That would only be the fair and right thing to do.</p>
<p>The real question is whether non-Jewish whites are over-represented among students receiving merit aid from schools outside the top 20, or among students enrolled in honors colleges at schools outside the top 10 state schools, especially those programs that require stats that are around the median for Ivy admits…</p>
<p>According to Hunt and JHS, Jewish students “assimilated” into waspy norms and that is how they were able to “storm the Citadels” of the Ivy League. So what happened to the wasps who are waspier than Jewish students and by that logic more qualified to be there?</p>
<p>In terms of concentrated Jewish population, I would bet that the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan constitutes a third “coast”. There are lots of Jews in and around Chicago. And, what’s more, I do not know of any significant history of discrimination against Jews at Northwestern or the University of Chicago (or, indeed, at any of the great midwestern universities). I think there are many Jewish families in Chicagoland with multi-generational ties to either or both universities. </p>
<p>For example, the penultimate chairman of the University of Chicago Board of Trustees was James Crown; several buildings on campus are named for his grandfather, and his name and his father’s crop up, too. (I am not certain any of them actually attended the University of Chicago, by the way.)</p>
<p>As for WASPs at Harvard – the descendants of Massachusetts Bay Colony members, or signers of the Mayflower Compact, and even the Episcopalian and Presbyterian elites from down the coast, are getting more and more rare, and they have lots of institutions to choose from. They dominated Harvard et al. when those colleges were half the size they are now. The vast number of people we would now call WASPs are evangelical or nondenominational Christians with no particular historical or cultural ties to Harvard, and they live in different places and are oriented in different directions than the WASPs for whom Harvard was “first child of their wilderness, star of their night.”</p>
<p>(Anyway, we’ll see whether my college best friend’s child, a legacy, of course, and a direct descendant of Jonathan Edwards and Timothy Dwight, gets accepted at Yale this year.)</p>
<p>And as a non-Jewish white myself, I’m not thrilled with this idea.</p>
<p>I was talking about people’s cultural values, not their ability. There are many different subcultures among the non-Jewish white population in the United States, and not all of them place a heavy emphasis on academic achievement. </p>
<p>That’s all I said – or at least, it’s all I intended to say.</p>
<p>Colleges are only recorded if they had 10 or more attendees. I sorted through it and looked at HYP…and interesting Y and P have a goodly chunk of Illinois freshman and MIT even got 43 Illinois freshman…Harvard does not show up, unless I’m just not seeing it, which means there were less than 10 freshman from Illinois. I find that particularly interesting.</p>
<p>I’m puzzled why you’re puzzled – there are wealthy Jewish families in many places, not just the eastern seaboard. The wealthiest families I knew in St. Louis were Jewish and they had lifestyles to rival anyone pretty much anywhere. I’m sure some of them donated to WashU. </p>
<p>The renaming of the arts and sciences college and the medical school is relatively recent. The Weinbergs and the Feinbergs are wealthy Jewish donors. There are other wealthy Jewish families who have donated to Northwestern – the Crown family and the Pritzkers are the two that come to mind off the top of my head. I assume the Regensteins, who also have a building named for them, are Jewish.</p>
<p>You have to remember, way back, there weren’t that many colleges in existence. </p>
<p>JHS, I called a school DH’s gggf grad’d from almost 200 years ago- on a whim- and politely asked, should D1 somehow note this legacy. It took them a few consultations, but they called me back and said, why not?, “go for it.” But, that’s just a silly anecdote.</p>
<p>I think you are wrong Marian. There are more people than you realize of all races and religions who dream that their child will one day go to Harvard. They also naively believe that America is a meritocracy.</p>
<p>Now in my personal experience the numbers we have been talking about exactly match what I have seen. My child went to a very strong private school. The 10 cum laude kids(all NMSF, all brilliant students) included 2 Jewish, 1 Asian, and 7 non-jewish whites. Guess who got into Harvard and Yale. And not one of the wasp kids attended HYSPM. One wasp did get in that was about a third the way down the class rank and was a fencer.</p>
<p>This is an unofficial student newspaper, so take it with a grain of salt, but according to this article, there were unofficial quotas on Jews, blacks and Catholics at Northwestern from 1948 - 1964. But yes, I absolutely agree with your larger point that between the North Shore, Gold Coast and Hyde Park, you’ve got many Jewish families with ties to either or both institutions. The fact that the same donors pop up for NU and U of Chicago is notable, too. </p>
<p>In response to Marian’s point in #191, I would guess that many people from different white subcultures do value academic achievement but do not feel they have a fair shot or ever had one. For example, non-Jewish whites from Southern, Central, and Eastern European backgrounds may believe that they have been passed over, as the early opportunities to attend the elite institutions went to WASPs, then to Jews, and now to URM’s with the Asians only pushing their way in through the sheer force of will at a level that usually only occurs within those who have some deep familiarity with extreme poverty and hardship, such as that suffered by parents or grandparents.</p>
<p>sm74, aside from athlestic recruits- which is a world of its own- getting to finalist is all about the CA. Not just the sections that reflect stats and rigor. Merit is more broadly defined than BMOC in a high school. It’s easy to say things are not meritocratic, when you define it in narrow terms.</p>
<p>Ashkenazi Jews average about 110 on IQ tests, compared to 100 for other whites. You can read the Wikipedia article on Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence or [Jewish Genius
by Charles Murray
Commentary Magazine
April 2007](<a href=“http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/jewish-genius/”>http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/jewish-genius/</a>) for more discussion of this topic. I think Jewish “over-representation” at elite schools or among the ranks of Nobel prize winners is largely explained by IQ differences.</p>