<p>I'm curious if colleges ask for your religion the application? (Not that it would make any difference in admissions)</p>
<p>Secondly, if say an Indian is Catholic (1% of India's population = Catholic), would that help?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>None of the applications I have seen have asked that, as far as I know. I've seen applications for Stanford, UC's, Brown, Penn, Cornell, Amherst, Columbia, Vassar, Yale, et cetera. If I am wrong, I didn't look the applications over very well lol</p>
<p>tore: Sounds good ~ thanks!</p>
<p>Definately does not affect admissions decisions at top tier schools.</p>
<p>If you're applying to a religious school, especially conservative Protestant ones, then yes, they do ask - a friend of mine had to check yes or no to "Have you been saved?" when applying to Asuza Pacific. They don't ask at top tier schools, though.</p>
<p>"Have you been saved?" LOL</p>
<p>I'm surprised that a school would ask "Have you been saved?" on the application. Nevertheless, tore listed all the schools I'll be applying to - and none of them asked for relgiion. Thanks for everyone's posts, by the way.</p>
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a friend of mine had to check yes or no to "Have you been saved?" when applying to Asuza Pacific.
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<p>Hahaha....that's hilarious! Are the people who checked off "no" forced to convert at freshman orientation or do they get automatically rejected? </p>
<p>To Economist: Many colleges in the US are religiously affiliated (i.e. Harvard was originally a school that trained Puritan ministers), but many of them are now only nominally affiliated with that religion. For example, American U in Washington D.C. is Methodist, but that does not play a very big role in campus/co-curricular life, it's not like they begin every class with a prayer or something like that. I applied to a Catholic-affiliated school that asked for religion in the app--they had no problem that I was Hindu since I was accepted.</p>
<p>Being a Catholic, even if they make up only 1% of India's pop. won't really help in admissions. And Indians are very well represented in most top-tier schools, so, I'm sorry to say, that won't help much either!</p>
<p>Some schools might ask about religious affiliation so the appropriate campus ministry can contact interested students about services and so on. Schools with a religious affiliation might use it as an admission criterion but I would be very surprised if it entered into admissions decisions elsewhere.</p>
<p>Lol, thanks for the last two posts. I came up with this question because I attend a Catholic, Jesuit high school and we have almost a 81% rate to Santa Clara University, 40% acceptance rate to Georgetown University, and 46% acceptance rate to Boston College - all of these colleges are Catholic, Jesuit schools. It just seemed to me that being Catholic must have had some impact on admissions?</p>
<p>If religiously schools gave preference to students of that religion, that might be deemed as being discriminatory. I'm not Catholic, but was accepted to a Catholic college with a really good scholarship, so I doubt that those Jesuit schools give preferential treatment to Catholics.</p>
<p>Probably the reason that your Jesuit high school has a high acceptance rate is because private schools in general usually have higher standards and are more competitive than your average public hs.</p>
<p>Economist, w/r/t Santa Clara, BC, Georgetown, it's not being catholic, it's having gone to a Jesuit HS. For instance, I had a chat last year with a BC admissions rep at my D's HS - she was presenting, and my D did not apply to BC, so it was safe to speak with her. I mentioned I had gone to a Jesuit HS. She then told me how those kids are treated differently. For instance, only they get interviews at BC.</p>
<p>Since Jesuit schools take non Catholics, you can see how it is not a religious thing.</p>
<p>newmassdad: That makes sense; I've heard that also Jesuit medical schools favored students that come from Jesuit colleges for undergrad.</p>
<p>Think of Jesuit (and other Catholic prep) high schools as the "feeder" schools for colleges like Notre Dame, Boston College and Santa Clara - no different than the northeastern prep schools that many consider feeder schools for the Ivies. My daughter attends a Catholic school and the GC office definitely pushes Catholic colleges to kids as well - it's what they're familiar with and they have developed relationships with those schools. From the colleges point of view, they are often more familiar with those schools as well rather than the public schools so, yes, graduates from those high schools may get a bit of a boost when they apply. But, it's not based on religion but rather on familiarity with the individual schools.</p>
<p>Because of the "free exercise of religion" clause in the First Amendment, schools with a religious mission may chose students exclusively from those practicing a particular faith. Biola (the Bible Institute of Los Angeles), for example states on its web site that
"[a]pplicant must be an evangelical believer in the Christian faith."</p>
<p>Greybeard,</p>
<p>True, but I understand that to do so, they must give up all federal funds, including financial aid funds.</p>