<p>Oi vaiy. The amalgamation of all people will occur in the far future; meanwhile, we’re trying to raise our kids and help them launch their one little life in real time, in the 21st century. </p>
<p>P.S. Judaism is a way of life, not a race. It’s a form of civilization. Its beauty and practicality alone makes it worth preservation. When you have something beautiful you want to pass it along to the children whom you love. It’s actually not so complicated.</p>
<p>leanid: Judaism is not a race; it is a religion…just like Islam, Christianity, Catholicism, etc…</p>
<p>None of those religions would want to see their history and their culture be decreased…</p>
<p>I am not going to go into an extensive history of the Jewish people… and why it is important to many of us that the religion be maintained; I’ll leave that to others…</p>
<p>your post does smack of needing some educational intervention though…</p>
<p>Leanid: I’m sure that Levrim can explain this better, but I’ll try. Jews have been persecuted throughout history, but we have survived. We are taught that it is the responsiblity of each generation to ensure that our religion continues.</p>
<p>Astonished: I loved the story about your Irish Catholic mother. She and my Jewish mother could be twins. With my mom, it was all about going to college and meeting a “nice, Jewish boy.”</p>
<p>“Why must the Jews set them selves apart?”</p>
<p>They’re not alone; there are many human groups that try to preserve themselves. In a thousand years we will indeed be more assimilated, but totally? Being only 40 or so generations, I doubt it.</p>
<p>Okay, I am ignorant. Can someone briefly explain the “beauty” of Judaism? </p>
<p>(I did know, or at least suspected, that Jews are not a race!)</p>
<p>It’s the same kind of explanation as for any other religion, or for nature if you have none. You need a good book on the subject.</p>
<p>Here in NY, we know many Jewish families whose kids go to Fordham or other Catholic school. The family across the street sent their kids to Solomon Schechter which is a Jewish school, but both parents have taken courses at Catholic colleges and they had no problems including some Catholic schools on their kids’ lists. I know some Jewish professors at Catholic schools and they would have no qualms about having their kids go to the college where they teach and have some tuition waiver benefits. Heck, Fordham tuition free sounds really good to me.</p>
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<p>Sure! “What’s hateful to you, do not do to others. All the rest is commentary. Now, go and learn.”</p>
<p>I didn’t make that up. It was a pretty good answer the last time someone asked to be explained Judaism “while standing on one foot.” Essentially, Vossron’s reply says the exact same thing.</p>
<p>Our family would never look at a Catholic/Jesuit school for our Jewish sons. Are there other choices of schools in neighboring states? I understand there are quite a few colleges in Colorado that have decent size Jewish populations. Levirm suggested Canadian colleges, interesting suggestion! :)</p>
<p>I must have not read the beginning of this thread well enough. There MUST be some better choices for your child in California that have decent Jewish populations and that are not Catholic/Jesuit.</p>
<p>I’m going to speak in favor of a Jesuit college education. I was raised Jewish and my daughter graduated from Santa Clara in June. When we were looking at colleges, DD wanted a school with about 3-5 thousand students…or so, with a good core curriculum, no grad/teaching assistants, and an emphasis on the undergraduate experience. She also wanted a place where there was a strong commitment to community service. She applied to five schools, three of them were Catholic (U of San Diego, Santa Clara, Salve Regina…Salve was her safety school). When she looked at the schools and the kind of support they offered the students, she knew she had hit a home run for herself with Santa Clara. She said the school was very liberal and ecumenical. Her friends were of many different faiths, not all were Catholic. Yes, there were church related things around the campus, but it did not define our daughter’s education at the school. </p>
<p>I’m quite sure there are schools with larger Jewish populations that have similar qualifies. BUT I have to say…the Jesuits have done a fine job of crafting higher education. I think their schools are quite good.</p>
<p>The beauty of Judaism is not the point of this thread.
Our EFC is full tuition no matter where she goes. This is mainly due to some inherited assets that can not be sold. So while we live quite nicely compared to most of america on our income it would be difficult to pay upwards of 50,000 plus at any given time for multiple children. No country clubs or boats. Our biggest expense if you don’t count the older siblings in college is younger D’s EC. What we spend on that horse every year!
My H is not the only one making this difficult. My D’s wants and needs change daily. One day she wants rural where she can also keep a horse. The next day she is thinking she is going to definitely live rural one day so she might try college in an urban enviroment. But she might also like outdoor activities and snowboarding nearby.She has to “have riding” one day, the next she doesn’t have to have it as long as she keeps the present animal in the family. She has even offered out attending the local CC for two years in exchange for an expensive show jumper.
Costs- the cost of attendance at UC Santa Barbara is around 31,000. Cal Poly SLO 22,000. Univ of Denver (on her list) 49,000. Western Washington 30,000 but she should qualify for western tuition exchange. So while we are not willing to spend 50,000 plus we are willing to spend between 30,000 and 38,000. Both older kids have merit aid bringing down their cost but they are still expensive. We would spend on our D what we spent on the other kids. This child is at this point planning on graduate school.
I also want to correct the misinformation that she is not smart. She is smart just not over the top CC smart. She is capable of most anything if she wanted to put in the effort. Figured out her GPA today. Unweighed 3.5 weighed 3.7. Her SAT scores are hopefully going to be 1900-2050 based on the practice tests. The GPA could have been higher. Many of those B’s were 89.7 and could have been A’s if she did more homework or a few extra credit assignments.
To answer Levirm- She will apply to UC Santa Cruz, UC Santa Barbara and UC Davis. SB and Davis are luck of the draw. If she can get the SAT score high enough they are a possibility.</p>
<p>mom60: I’ve been following your thread, but haven’t had much to add because I’m not very familiar with West Coast colleges. I completely understand your feeling about not having your daughter go too far away given your distance from an airport.</p>
<p>Have you visited any of the Jesuit colleges that interest you? That is the best way to see how comfortable you, your husband and your daughter are with those campuses. I visited Georgtown with one of my daughters, and she realized that she was uncomfortable with crosses in classrooms and the Catholic atmosphere.</p>
<p>It sounds like your daughter is still pretty confused about what she wants. At this point, the best thing you can do is visit different campuses and keep your options open.</p>
<p>OK, I know that you want schools in the west but I just couldn’t help sending you this link to merit scholarships at a college that has an equestrian program:
[Goucher</a> College Admissions](<a href=“http://www.goucher.edu/x20991.xml]Goucher”>http://www.goucher.edu/x20991.xml)</p>
<p>levirm- I will show her the link.
For a brief while she was sure she wanted to go to Hollins. That was until she found out the size of the school and that it was all female.
She has a unique school schedule this semester and I am hoping to get her to go visit a couple of schools that are within 2-3 hours of home. It will give her some idea of several different types of schools. We could even throw a visit into a Jesuit campus.
H visited Georgetown and Boston College with my older D so I will have to get some clarity about how he really feels about a Catholic college.</p>
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<p>Saying Judaism is just like any other religion is simply not true. Even if my mother is Catholic, I cannot say I am therefore a Catholic. I don’t think Catholicism can be inherited like Judaism can through the maternal line.
I don’t look at Protestant and Catholic as being cultural.</p>
<p>There are studies recently published in the NY Times that show Jews all over the world are linked genetically. They refute the suggestion made last year by the historian Shlomo Sand in his book “The Invention of the Jewish People” that Jews have no common origin but are a miscellany of people in Europe and Central Asia who converted to Judaism at various times. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/science/10jews.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/science/10jews.html</a></p>
<p>What are your daughters stats like GPA and test scores if you don’t mind me asking?</p>
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<p>That still doesn’t make us a race. We’re just one big mishpocheh, that’s all.</p>
<p>Mom60-- </p>
<p>Don’t worry about your daughter! She sounds completely normal to me! We have been through more mind changing about types of schools, majors, etc etc with the 2 daus than Dr Who has had incarnations. And that was before they got anywhere near sending out applications.</p>
<p>Maybe doing some college visiting of schools that are conveniently near you, including ones to which she has no intention of applying, would help narrow her focus. We did this with our daughters —with the first one, accidentally, with the second, deliberately.</p>
<p>We happened to be vacationing in Williamsburg and to get to the Colonial W site you literally drive past William & Mary. We were doing that daily so the second day we said, let’s stop and visit this school. It was the summer after 9th grade. </p>
<p>We did the whole routine – info session, tour, peek inside dorms, ate lunch at a spot kids frequent. We learned a lot about W & M. D liked the campus a lot (who wouldn’t?) — but the best thing, we felt, was she realized her chances of acceptance there were very slim, unless she raised her grades one heck of a lot—and she also caught on to how competitive admissions is for any of these schools (at that time in her life she was planning to be an archeologist & W&M has very good prep for that field). It was better she heard it from them! (The info session was very frank about this)</p>
<p>The purpose of starting your college visiting with a couple whose only virtue for the purposes of the initlal visit is extreme nearness to your house is, you are doing it for “practice”—you begin to get a feel for campuses; you can ask “silly” questions and not worry about embarassment; you begin to be able to “read” the students walking around.</p>
<p>Then when you are visiting schools that you had to set aside serious time for, and are really thinking of, you are not such rank amateurs. You don’t waste your time getting your feet wet. </p>
<p>In your shoes, I would insist that Daddy go along on a few visits to Large State Us, so he can see the dorms where his D would be living, where eating, size of lecture halls, etc for himself. And, <em>after</em> those, a visit or two to Smaller Places. </p>
<p>BTW this summer D & I visited Goucher, which for a while was a big deal choice for her. At the end of the day we spent, it was not any longer. </p>
<p>Reasons—</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Too small a student body. We felt that by the end of freshman year, by 10 am the entire school knows what color underwear you are wearing that day. The lovely young man who gave the tour told us as much more than once, though he did not phrase it that way.</p></li>
<li><p>While everyone was very nice, it was a genteel waspy kind of “nice” that rattled me. The young man told us that the place was originally founded as a finishing school for the best girls of Baltimore and in those days, that meant the best White Protestant girls. He said that he felt there are still vestiges of that – one of the “vestiges” is the equestrian program!</p></li>
</ol>
<p>It is no longer any such thing as a finishing school, of course–but there was a whiff of something there that set me off. They put much stock in modern college stuff like being very gay-welcoming and service outreaches, and with their heritage as a womens school, girls have no trouble getting things like plum internships, etc. But as an Irish Catholic who has noticed the difference in the way some people react when they hear my maiden name instead of my married (German) name, I felt there was a bit of preciousness there. And maybe a little of the “some of my best friends are…” thing. </p>
<p>I’m not putting a knock on Goucher, which is a fine school and has very nice people, but I privately thought, with that heritage and being so small, it was not the right place for my Catholic daughter. Even in the 21st Cent (And, maybe we would have picked up less of that if we had been there when there were more students).</p>
<p>One very good thing about Goucher is it shares many resources with about 4 other schools in Baltimore–Johns Hopkins, Loyola U, MICA, Notre Dame (Cath girls)—there is a shuttle bus that runs all around all day long & much of the night, so kids can get to any concerts, lectures, parties, etc held at any of these schools, and you can also cross register for courses not offered at your own school among this group–and they share library resources.</p>
<p>“Sure! “What’s hateful to you, do not do to others. All the rest is commentary. Now, go and learn.””</p>
<p>Okay, so you try to live by the ‘golden rule’. Other religions promote that as well, yet I don’t see a conscious effort on their part to “preserve the faith” for some nebulous future. What is so important about Judaism that it must be preserved? Indeed – God, him/her/it self, is being thrown out with the bath water, let alone preserving various religions. Why Judaism? Seriously. </p>
<p>Mind you, this is coming from one raised in Catholicism, that, as you know, holds absolute views on faith and is replete with ceremony and ritual, like Judaism, yet its “faithful” are leaving in droves and seem to be embracing atheism – of all things!</p>
<p>leanid- the purpose of this thread is not to prove to you or explain to you while Jewish people feel their religion and culture is worth preserving. Please stop trying to direct this thread in a different way. The OP came with a question and has been given many insightful answers.</p>