<p>I know there's a lot of interest in this, so I thought I'd start a new thread, rather than add to the "Jewish B student" one. </p>
<p>This month's issue of "Reform Judaism" has a section dealing with colleges and college life:</p>
<p>That’s an interesting list. My kids are Jewish and attended Brown and NYU and I see there is a significant percentage of Jews at those colleges. I didn’t realize it was as high as that. It was a major contrast to their K-12 years when they were one of the only Jews in their entire school.</p>
<p>I’m not surprised that the U of Chicago isn’t on there; it’s “only” about 10% Jewish. Which is still a higher percentage than in my son’s high school; we lived in a town that had very few Jewish people.</p>
<p>And I guess NYU has always had a lot of Jewish students, given the highly offensive nickname it had even back when I was in college.</p>
<p>Donna…oh, now you piqued my interest…my kid went to NYU and I am not aware of the offensive nickname. I wonder what it was/is.</p>
<p>“N” “Y” “Jew”</p>
<p><apropos to=“” some=“” other=“” ongoing=“” threads=“” ;)=“”> </apropos></p>
<p>Must not have had “parent editing”. Watch the data. Tulane has two different percentages listed.</p>
<p>audiophile…thanks, learn something new on CC every day. My kid is a recent graduate and I have never heard this before!</p>
<p>This is a self-perpetuating sort of thing.</p>
<p>Colleges with a large Jewish community tend to attract Jewish students, who then perpetuate that Jewish community.</p>
<p>My son went to the University of Maryland (which has its own offensive nickname) and was surprised by the size of the Jewish population there. The percentage of Jews at the university is far higher than the percentage of Jews in the state it serves. But the University of Maryland has a thriving Jewish community. Thus, it attracts a lot of Jewish out-of-state students.</p>
<p>The only ones that surprise me are Tulane, Emory, and Washington U St. Louis. The others I could have easily guessed. I think Marian has it right, it’s a self-perpetuating system.</p>
<p>amtc - It will also surprise you, then, that there is actually a long history of Judaism in New Orleans. For many years it was one of the bigger centers of Jews in America. So was (and still is) St. Louis. Atlanta I am not so sure about, although of course there has always been some presence.</p>
<p>Go Binghamton! 30% Jewish XD</p>
<p>Not entirely self-perpetuating, especially when it comes to the percentage of student body. Muhlenberg College is now ranked #5, behind the expected schools (Yeshiva, List, American Jewish U, Brandeis). In raw numbers, USC made a concerted effort in the last couple decades to attract Jewish students. I’m sure there are other examples. </p>
<p>The magazine does this every (couple of?) years, and there’s definitely been changes in the lists. Some schools always appear, but others move on or off.</p>
<p>Hillel has a search function that allows you to find out the percent Jewish population, and many other features of any school that interests you:
[Hillel</a> Campus Search](<a href=“http://www.hillel.org/HillelApps/JLOC/Search.aspx]Hillel”>http://www.hillel.org/HillelApps/JLOC/Search.aspx)</p>
<p>The Hillel reported percentages may or may not have any basis in fact. In many cases, these numbers are just pulled out of thin air, literally some student officer of a local Hillel branch saying, “I think the students here are about X% Jewish…”</p>
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<p>Can you give more basis to your assertion? I’m kind of doubting it. </p>
<p>Admittedly, until just now, I had never seen either listing, top 60 colleges chosen by Jews, or the Hillel site. But after reading your statement above, I just took a quick look at the search funtion on the Hillel site and I randomly picked 7 colleges that wre on the 60 colleges chosen by Jews site and checked them on the Hillel site. </p>
<p>Here is what I found…</p>
<p>These are numbers of undergraduate Jewish students…the first number is from the top 60 schools chosen by Jews site and the second number is from Hillel’s site:</p>
<p>Hofstra: 1500 1500
Boston Univ: 3500 3500
Tulane 2000 2000
American 1778 1778
George Washington 3000 3300
Yale 1500 1500
Brandeis 1600 1600</p>
<p>So, six out of these randomly chosen 7 colleges have figures that match up on Hillel with the data collected by the other publication, and then for GW, they differ by 300 students. </p>
<p>How you do maintain that the numbers are pulled out of thin air? </p>
<p>You really think the data on the sites not sponsored by Hillel are made up by some kid in the office?</p>
<p>They match because Reform Judaism Magazine bases their report on Hillel’s data.</p>
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<p>OK, thank you for clarifying that. Still, I imagine Hillel has some basis for this information and not some kid’s wild estimate.</p>
<p>Take Yale for example. Yale only has about 3000 - 3500 undergrads who are not African American, Latino/a, or Asian. Is it really plausible to think that 1500 of them (1 out of every 2) are Jewish? That’s so out of line with the US demographics that it almost defies logic, even though Jews have historically been over-represented in elite college admissions.</p>
<p>Hillel reports 19% for Swarthmore. Dean Gross, as Dean of College and in a very good position to know, said that there were no numbers because the College didn’t ask about religious affiliation on any survey or form. However, his estitmate was 10% (which would be about 1 out of every 6 white students). I’m going with the Dean’s estimate.</p>
<p>I think the Hillel numbers are just “conventional wisdom”. They may be accurate for some schools, but in many cases they bear little resemblence to reality.</p>
<p>I would bet the Yale number includes grad students. (Assuming they aren’t pulled out of a hat as idad asserts, which I also think is possible.)</p>
<p>According to the magazine and Hillel, those numbers are allegedly the undergrad numbers.</p>
<p>I think it’s plausible that, at one point in its history, Harvard undergrad was 25% Jewish…at a point in time when Harvard was 100% caucasian. Today, however Harvard is only 60% caucasian, meaning that Hillel’s 25% figure would be 4 out of every 10 non black, non-Latino, and non-Asian students are Jewish. I don’t think that number is plausible. I think the “25%” figure is just a guess, maybe a high-water mark that has become conventional wisdom for Harvard Hillel.</p>