@csdadSo schools with 65-70% or more Christians can be diverse, but a school with 40-50% Jews can’t? Interesting …
@doschicos I don’t think my kids would want to go to a 65-70% Christian school
Since about 70-75% of the USA population is Christian, I think a majority of colleges do skew Christian.
I bet a measurable chunk of the students at my kids’ schools skew agnostic/atheist, @wisteria100 although plenty are both Christians and Jews, with a smattering of other religions thrown in.
Yes, that was (part of) my point :-). Not a huge deal, but stating that a school can’t be as diverse because it has more Jews is essentially religiocentric thinking. You could make the case that having more Jews makes it more diverse.
More likely it just plain doesn’t matter. I’m not familiar with the diversity numbers at too many schools, but my impression is that Brandeis is more diverse than some schools, and less diverse than others.
Should one be interested in categorizing students by their ethnic or religious backgrounds, a diverse college can be defined as one at which the students are present in proportion to that of the society from which they are drawn. This would be a maximally diverse school. Schools that vary in any direction from this would be less diverse.
My daughter is being recruited to play soccer at these two schools, and she did an overnight at Wes. The soccer coach at Brandeis is an “all timer” … a 36 year career at Brandeis and one of only a handful of coaches to have over 300 wins. The coach is a big plus for my daughter.
But she loved her visit at Wesleyan. Yeah, there was partying going on, but she didn’t report anything over the top. Her siblings are LAC kids … one at Middlebury and one at Pomona. Guess what? They get high at there too. We all know that. I agree with the poster who says that labels of “drug culture” are exaggerated. Yeah, Wes had a highly publicized incident last year or before with a bunch of kids who OD’d at a party using a drug from one supplier. It happens. In my state, WSU has the well-earned reputation for dangerous partying - in fact I think they had a few kids die of alcohol poisoning during the first month fall term. But UW, which doesn’t have the rep, has had their share of the same issues … I read about them in the Seattle Times all the time.
The point is, you can get into trouble anywhere, and avoid trouble anywhere.
If I were 18 and making that choice, I’d go with Wesleyan. Brandeis is excellent too. In addition to the arts, Wes is very very strong in many other areas, including math and science … especially physics.