<p>Irving as a first name, a first name!</p>
<p>[How</a> Many of Me](<a href=“http://howmanyofme.com/search/]How”>http://howmanyofme.com/search/)</p>
<p>Irving<br>
There are 40,935 people in the U.S. with the first name Irving.
Statistically the 897th most popular first name.
More than 99.9 percent of people with the first name Irving are male.
Names similar to Irving:
Irvin</p>
<p>Now surely not all 41,000 of these folks happen to be Jewish…</p>
<p>I have encountered non-Jewish people with a first name of Irving. It is not a very common first name overall, though.</p>
<p>Hunt’s joke about mothers letting their kids go outside and play baseball touches on an interesting issue.</p>
<p>My sense as to why Jewish students got so ensconced in the traditional prestigious universities is:</p>
<p>(1) The Jewish community, or a large portion of it, essentially adopted the WASP values of those universities lock, stock, and barrel. Jewish kids learned French poetry, did public service, played team sports, made films, wrote songs. They made themselves into the kinds of students the Ivies accepted.</p>
<p>(2) Jewish academics stormed the citadels, and got a big voice in setting what the values of the universities were.</p>
<p>I think exactly the same process is happening with Asians, too, but perhaps more slowly (or perhaps it’s hard to see how slow it was for Jews to do that a century ago). I see lots more kids and adults on CC complaining about how Harvard doesn’t conform to a Confucian ideal of meritocracy than I see actually valuing things like studying dead languages or participating in civic institutions, not to mention getting drunk while wearing tuxedos. And many of those students, especially, seem to value relentless pursuit of wealth far beyond academic or civic honor. As long as that’s the case, as a group they are going to have a comparatively hard time looking like they belong at Harvard (or wherever).</p>
<p>^ Yes, apparently there are 896 more popular names :)</p>
<p>
It’s part of [Why</a> Chinese Mothers Are Superior](<a href=“http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html]Why”>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html). The Tiger Mother’s daughters were never allowed to</p>
<p> play any instrument other than the piano or violin</p>
<p> not play the piano or violin.</p>
<p>JHS,</p>
<p>What is your opinion about the disappearing WASP at the (or some) Ivies?</p>
<p>
^ Bug spray and sevin dust :)</p>
<p>Sorry-- it seemed funny at the time</p>
<p>
I don’t think there are that many more. More Asians for sure, probably more internationals, but I seem to recall reading somewhere there were more African American students 20-30 years ago than there are now. Unfortunately I am failing to find any numbers on Google.</p>
<p>
I agree with JHS–although I wasn’t exactly joking about this. Jewish kids do play baseball and pretty much all the other sports, and they are involved in all kinds of ECs. This is a result of assimilation.</p>
<p>I don’t know where people get the stereotype of most Asian kids play violin comes from. Most of the Asian kids I know don’t play violin. There are much more kids playing piano than violin. Some play both.
This does not necessarily conflict with the fact that a majority of violinists in an orchestra can be Asian kids. There are a lot of Asian kids play these instruments as opposed to guitars and drums.</p>
<p>The only take away from this article was the underrepresentation on non-jewish whites. I am sick of hearing how bad Jews and Asians have it. I feel for the donut hole non-jewish whites.</p>
<p>
I the point is that if you compare a group of Asian kids to a group of non-Asian kids–at least where I live–many, many more of the Asian kids will play violin than among the non-Asian kids. It still may not be a majority of the Asian kids. But among the non-Asian kids, there will still be some violin players, but also brass players, percussionists, etc.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think in answering this question, are you talking about what Alumother calls in her blog “High WASPs” - the historical ruling scions, heavily loaded to the eastern seaboard, old-money from the Industrial Revolution or before, white-shoe law firms, sons / daughters of the American Revolution and signers of the D of I – who traditionally also attended the St. Grottlesex-type boarding schools and from there went to HYP?</p>
<p>Or are you talking just everyday WASPs – Joe and Jane Whitebread who happen to be not-Catholic and not-Jewish?</p>
<p>99.9% of those with first name Irving are male-? Somewhere, there are women first-named Irving. Poor dears.</p>
<p>
My kid’s HS is about 20% Asian … the symphony orchestra is about 80% Asian. For me the interesting complication is about 1/3rd of those violin, cello, etc playing Asian kids are adopted into white families … so I’m not sure how that should count. </p>
<p>These kids are not the majority of all Asians … but the vast majority of the kids in some ECs are Asian</p>
<p>PG,</p>
<p>I mean it in this sense, which I believe has become common usage today, and includes Whites of all types of Christian heritages:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>[White</a> Anglo-Saxon Protestant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Anglo-Saxon_Protestant]White”>White Anglo-Saxon Protestants - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>I was at Harvard as recently as 2002 – the number of white students has changed very little since then.</p>
<p>I’m not surprised by the “underrepresentation” of non-Jewish whites at highly selective colleges.</p>
<p>Unlike Jews or Asians, non-Jewish whites come from a variety of cultural backgrounds, many of which do not involve placing a very high value on formal education. </p>
<p>In many non-Jewish white homes, it’s great if you’re a good student, but it’s not a major issue if you’re not. I grew up in a home like that. I was a high school valedictorian and a National Merit Finalist, and my parents were mildly pleased with this, but I always got the impression that they would have been a lot more impressed with other achievements – such as being a cheerleader, class officer, or talented artist. (I was none of those things.) If I had been a boy, they would have been much more impressed with athletic achievements than academic ones and would have been more worried if I was not successful in sports than if I was not successful in school.</p>
<p>I suspect that most Jewish or Asian people cannot even imagine such an environment. Even my own kids (whose other parent is Jewish) probably cannot imagine it.</p>
<p>Well, one thing that complicates this is that Jews are disproportionately concentrated on the Eastern Seaboard, which has more of that “Ivy Fever” in the first place.</p>