<p>I for one believe intelligence has more to do with culture and environment than genetics (although I think they play a role), because by that same token, would that make African-Americans, Latinos, and Native-Americans less intelligent (RE: intellectual achievement across demographics)..</p>
<p>Heavenwood-
Can you post the exact reference/citation for this list in post #7, and your graphs? I looked on the Hillel website but could not find it. Thanks!</p>
<p>Jym, I looked up each college and university, and of those that were listed on Hillel (See the asterisked footnotes), I divided the number of estimated Jewish students by the number of undergraduates.</p>
<p>wow! that seems like a LOT of work. Where did the graphs come from? Is there a reference for them?</p>
<p>Yay for us overrepresentedsss</p>
<p>yeah the Shap in my name is short for Shapiro</p>
<p>that genetic mumbo jumbo doesn't apply to everyone ;</p>
<p>There is a strong cultural bent towards intellectual pursuits among Ashkenazi Jews. They were subject as a people to strong discrimination, pogroms, other physical abuse up to and including death. Many Christian physicians were not permitted by the Church to treat Jews, so Jews became physicians out of necessity. They also became bankers because Christians were not permitted to charge interest, and so did not lend money. (Oh, by the way, Jews did not become bankers by choice, but were in many situations forced to become bankers by being locked out of many other professions and jobs.) They became the "People of the Book", with the books being not only the holy ones but the secular ones. In many communities, the Rabbi was not "ordained" by any organized body, but was simply the one most learned in the laws of the Torah and Talmud. And the rabbi was encouraged to have as many children as possible, who would also be taught. The highest honor one could be paid was to be called "learned".</p>
<p>Because of the pogroms and other expulsions from their own countries, education became intensely important. As my grandmother (a Holocaust survivor) told me many times, "The only thing they cannot take away from you is what you know." (She was a pharmacist, and she kept her family alive during the Holocaust by compounding naturopathic remedies and getting paid in food.)</p>
<p>Right, it's cultural. That I agree with.</p>
<p>The environment one grows up in is key. One does not grow up wanting to go to Harvard and get an education, it is ingrained from attitudes expressed arround you.</p>
<p>Some of those numbers are skewed also because it doesn't take into account practicing Jews vs. secular or cultural Jews. At Brandeis, we may have 60% of the student body as ethnically Jewish, but my roommate and I last night were discussing this very topic, and we ventured a guess that the actual practicing amount is 20% tops- and that includes the High Holy Days Jews. Most of us are agnostic or deist Jews who do not prescribe to the religion.</p>
<p>Religious or not, once a Jew, always a Jew...we had to learn that one the hard way.</p>
<p>Heavenwood
Correct. Whether one is practicing their religion or not is irrelevant. There are sociocultural, familial and environmaneal aspects to one's religious upbringing and affiliation, regardless of whether they actively practice their religion or not. There are plenty of Christians who go to church only on Christmas and Easter just as there are many Jews who go only on Rosh Hashana or Yom Kippur. There are those of both religions that don't set foot in a house of worship at all. But they still are affiliated with, and identify with, and consider themselves of their religion. I wasn't very "religious" in college, and to be honest I am not extremely "religious" now. But I have always felt comfortable around those of my religion, as there is a sense of familiarity, and I will always identify myself as being of this religion. It is easy to not "practice" your religion when you are around 60% of people who are of like kind. I have to wonder, Silver Clover, if you would feel the same way if you attended a school where only 5% of the population was Jewish. It feels quite different when you are a distinct minority. </p>
<p>As an aside, I believe Hillel gets its statistics by finding out how many students in any student body identify themselves as jewish. So the numbers may be "skewed" if one doesnt report a religious affiliation.</p>
<p>Why do MIT and Caltech have such low percentages of Jewish students?</p>
<p>Does anyone else find this thread a little creepy in a Third Reich, Let's Keep Track of the Jews sort of way? Shudder.</p>
<p>UW-Madison has proudly been accepting Jewish students in large numbers for many decades including times when many other institution limited their Jewish enrollment. There are currently 5,000 undergraduate and graduate students at the university, and a brand new Hillel building is under construction.</p>
<p>I think this data is quite interesting from a sociological perspective. Clearly some top schools are more "Jewish-friendly" than others, in the sense that more Jewish students apply, are accepted, and ultimately decide to attend. This information could potentially be useful to other Jewish applicants, whether observant or secular, if ongoing ties to Jewish religious and intellectual traditions, culture, and values are an important criterion in their selection of a college. Rearranging the OP's data (and taking that data at face values), here are how the top 50 (or 55) national universities in the 2007 US News rankings stack up in percentage of the student body that is Jewish: </p>
<ol>
<li>Yeshiva 44 >99***</li>
<li>Brandeis 31 62</li>
<li>NYU 34 34</li>
<li>Emory 18 33</li>
<li>Tufts 27 32</li>
<li>George Washington 52 32</li>
<li>Penn 7 31</li>
<li>Harvard 2 30</li>
<li>Wash U 12 27</li>
<li>Columbia 9 25</li>
<li>Brown 15 25</li>
<li>Tulane 44 25</li>
<li>Yale 3 23</li>
<li>Northwestern 14 23</li>
<li>Cornell 12 22</li>
<li>U Rochester 34 20</li>
<li>Syracuse 52 20</li>
<li>U Maryland 54 18</li>
<li>Michigan 24 16</li>
<li>Rutgers 60 16</li>
<li>U Florida 47 16</li>
<li>U Miami 54 15</li>
<li>Princeton 1 14</li>
<li>U Chicago 9 14</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins 16 14</li>
<li>Lehigh 33 14</li>
<li>Wisconsin - Madison 34 14</li>
<li>Rice 17 12</li>
<li>UCLA 26 12</li>
<li>Rensselaer Polytechnic 42 12</li>
<li>Duke 8 11</li>
<li>Dartmouth 9 11</li>
<li>Vanderbilt 18 11</li>
<li>Carnegie Mellon 21 11</li>
<li>Georgetown 23 11</li>
<li>Case Western 38 11</li>
<li>Penn State 47 11</li>
<li>Stanford 4 10</li>
<li>UC Berkeley 21 10</li>
<li>Virginia 24 10</li>
<li>Southern California 27 10</li>
<li>Texas - Austin 47 10</li>
<li>UC Davis 47 10</li>
<li>MIT 4 9</li>
<li>UIUC 41 9</li>
<li>William and Mary 31 7</li>
<li>UC San Diego 38 7</li>
<li>Cal Tech 4 6</li>
<li>U Washington 42 6</li>
<li>UNC - Chapel Hill 27 5</li>
<li>UC Irvine 44 5</li>
<li>Boston College 34 3</li>
<li>Georgia Tech 38 3</li>
<li>Wake Forest 30 2</li>
<li>Notre Dame 20 <0.5</li>
<li>UC Santa Barbara 47 <0.5</li>
<li>Pepperdine 54 <0.5</li>
</ol>
<p>Note that the Ivies generally rank quite high on this measure, with Princeton and Dartmouth at the lower end of that group. Generally schools in the South, Midwest, and West rank low, with notable exceptions like Emory, Wash U, Northwestern, Michigan, U Florida, Chicago, and Wisconsin.</p>
<p>Why does this matter?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Why does this matter?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I thought it was an interesting find. The usefulness of the information is of course debatable.</p>
<p>Tech-oriented colleges also seem to rank a bit lower, as Cornell (at 15th) is the first one there that I really associate with engineering.</p>
<p>I remember back at CMU there weren't a whole lot of Jewish kids on campus, but the practicing ones were pretty vocal about their views. I wonder how they survey would have counted me since I'm half Jewish and non-practicing.</p>
<p>I am certain this thread was started by someone Jewish. None of this should be a concern when you apply to college. This kind of obsession of pedigre is isolating, exclusionary and extremely self destructive. My husband is Jewish and thus my children 50%. we are proud of our inclusive marriage and believe it is the key to better worldly relations. My son who is applying to college is not even considering religion as a focus for where he will go. Good decent moral character is all that matters.</p>