whoa, Jews?

Applying to College
21

<p>Jewish people are generally wealthier than the average American, better educated, and most live on the east coast, where most of the big-time schools are.</p>

<p>I personally don't want to go to a heavily Jewish school. I want to go somewhere with some other Jews so I don't feel alone, but where it's more like the real world...where we're less than 5% of the USA population.</p>

<p>This is why Princeton, Georgetown, and Virginia fit the mold for me better than Brandeis, George Washington, and Columbia.</p>

22

<p>
[quote]
Brandeis is named after a friggin jewish guy

[/quote]

Right; the friggin' Jewish guy who was a US Supreme Court Justice. And yes, Brandeis was founded by Jews who could not get into good colleges because of quotas. </p>

<p>Anti-Semitism hit many walks of life. I worked for a law firm that was founded by Jews because they couldn't get hired by established law firms. There are several country clubs around us that were founded by Jews who were unable to join established country clubs.</p>

23

<p>it didnt help me in my college applications, i even talked about my hebrew tutoring, teaching sunday school, and being involved in my jewish youth group and reading torah...</p>

24

<p>UMich has an enormous Jewish population. I wish I would've known that before coming here.</p>

25

<p>OHgiraffe, I was going to suggest that you transfer, but I see that you are. Wake Forest seems to have the type of environment you are looking for. Good luck.</p>

26

<p>"Both USC and Vanderbilt were actively recruiting Jewish students a few years ago. I don't know if they are still doing so now. USC had an admission's staffer specifically responsible for recruiting Jewish students. Pamphlets were printed and scholarships were being offered. </p>

<p>USC was trying to overcome a reputation, especially among the Jewish community in Southern California, that it was unwelcoming to Jewish students. It wanted to make sure that USC replaced UCLA as the first alternative for those students. </p>

<p>How did they know which students were Jewish? Contacting that admissions counselor was one way. Plus the admission's counselor that handled the DC area was Jewish, and my son made sure she knew that he was Jewish."</p>

<p>lol, maybe this is why i got into USC. i always thought since it was in socal (where i am from) there would be a lot of jews there, it is news to me that there are so few there relatively.</p>

27

<p>I lost the article, but Princeton apparently has been weeding out its Jewish population (it has gone down at least 10% if not more over the past decades). I'm sorry i didn't bookmark the site, but I figured Jewish or not I wouldn't have much of a chance at such a school anyway and exited out. Meh, we wouldn't necessarily fit in with all the gentiles and shiksas there ;-)</p>

28

<p>I don't even remember putting, or them asking, that I'm Jewish anywhere on any of my applications.</p>

29

<p>UC Irvine might want to up their 'Jewish ratio', as they're being examined for alleged anti-Semitism.</p>

30

<p>LOL @ ema99's diplomacy & Wake Forest's cookie-cutter rep (good debate school, tho).</p>

<p>Dunno if being Jewish gives one a leg up at any school, but I'm a little surprised at posters who wish to actively avoid large Jewish populations. In my experience (grew up in Boston & NY), Jews had enviable reps for being generous, smart, spiritual, hardworking and socially responsible. While good and bad exist in all cultures and nothing's guaranteed, my (non-jewish) daughter is eagerly anticipating her next 4 years at Brandeis and cannot wait to meet and mingle with the diverse others she meets there.</p>

31

<p>Those figures 30%, etc...seem too high to me. Where are those from?</p>

32

<p>I read an article many years ago about Vanderbilt and Texas Christian University wanting to increase their Jewish student population.</p>

33

<p>Ouch! This thread has my grandmother rolling over in her grave!! Brandeis has a lot of jews because when it was started, no one else wanted us and it was started to educate the jews who weren't welcome elsewhere. My father, who graduated at the top of his Stuyvesant class and went to college and med school in the 40s, was rejected from a vast majority of schools because there were restrictions on the numbers of Jewish applicants most schools would accept. Jews, in general, are in college in greater numbers relative to their representation in the total population (there are 2 billion christians in the world; 2 billion muslims and 16 million jews). And NYU is a NY school, but has <em>never</em> been a jewish school. And there is no way that 30% of any school other than Brandeis is jewish. But, based on this discussion, I would have to guess that 30% or more of any of a number of schools could be anti semitic.</p>

34

<p>Fury:</p>

<p>This was over four years ago so I may be a little vague on this. There was an article in the LA Times about the recruiting of Jewish students saying that the second largest Jewish population in the US was in Southern California. They wanted to make USC the first choice for that group rather than UCLA.</p>

35

<p>
[quote]
And there is no way that 30% of any school other than Brandeis is jewish.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>From the Yale Hillel website:</p>

<p>
[quote]
Q:What portion of Yale Undergraduate students are Jewish?
A: Although there are no official statistics concerning the number of Jews at Yale, estimates give between 1/4 and 1/3 of the undergraduate population as being Jewish.

[/quote]
</p>

36

<p>^ WOW.</p>

<p>I didn't know that. Huh. I wonder how many Muslims there are at schools. As a Muslim, I'd want to go somewhere that was pretty open to my beliefs and had a strong Muslim Student Association [MSA].</p>

37

<p>One would have to look up the exact numbers on the Hillel site, but quite a few schools have close to or above that 30% mark. Off the top of my head, I believe this includes Penn, Harvard, Oberlin, Reed, Emory, WashU, Barnard, Yale?. Tulane is not far off. Please someone correct me if I'm wrong. Definitely NOT MIT, Dartmouth, Princeton, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, Duke. I hope ohgiraffe does his homework better this time.</p>

38

<p>fatlady: Wrong, wrong wrong. First off, schools such as Yeshiva are almost entirely Jewish. So yes, there are schools with more than 30%. Secondly, you don't know much about NYU if you think that it doesn't have a huge Jewish population. It has in fact the largest gross number of Jews in the country, and more than 30% of its graduates and over 20% of its undergrad are Jewish.</p>

<p>Also, the school sports one of the most active centers for Jewish activities in the country - Bronfman. How active? So active that Columbia, Yeshiva, Cooper, and other universities in NYC all run events through or with it because of its huge stature. Kosher foods are also part of the mealplan, though I believe it may be its own dining hall. Also, being in the city means a whole host of kosher dining options unavailable even to schools such as Brandeis.</p>

<p>But moreover, fatlady, I'll be frank and level with you. People such as yourself annoy me. It doesn't matter whether it's feminists, minorities, or the religious. Hypersensitivity is irritating. Before you accuse me of anti-semitism, please note that out of my extremely tight-knit group of friends, more than 3 quarters are Jewish. I'm not sure if your final sentence was just a whimsy, but to stick blindly to a perceived prejudice decades old (I'm assuming you're near 40 if your father was applying to colleges in 1940) is foolish and banal.</p>

39

<p>Man I love being Jewish! (As I'm sure the respective Christians/Muslims/Budhists/Athiests love being their respective religions too!)</p>

<p>We are incredibly overrepresented in positions of intellectual achievment. Here is a link of he percentage of Jews at top colleges:</p>

<p><a href="http://reformjudaismmag.org/_kd/Items/actions.cfm?action=Show&item_id=1278&destination=ShowItem%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://reformjudaismmag.org/_kd/Items/actions.cfm?action=Show&item_id=1278&destination=ShowItem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Of some noteworthy numbers:</p>

<p>Harvard and UPenn had aprox 30% Jews (And most other Ivies had somewhere between 20-25%). Thats a lot! I mean, given that the population of Jews in America is 2%, Jews are overrepresented by a factor of 15 at Harvard. That means that for every Jew there should be in a demographically correct Harvard class, there is actually 14 extra Jews pushing out the spots of other demographics!</p>

<p>It doesn't stop at the Ivies of course. Jews account for roughly for 20% nobel prizes ever given. Since Jews are .2% of the world population, that means that jews are overrepresented by a factor of (20/.2) = 100! So, one could argue that by merely BEING jewish, one has a 100 times more likely chance to win the nobel prize than the average person's chances (A silly thought that does have some flaws in its thinking, but just fun to think about)!</p>

<p>Our dominance doesn't stop there either! Jews are also on the top of the Entertainment, Political and News industries. Jews comprise aprox 22% of the supreme court, and about 10% of congress (remember, this all while we are only less than 2% of the countries population). The director considered to be the most influential in Hollywood, Spielberg, is jewish! A incredibly high percentage of the NY Times is Jewish. </p>

<p>What is going on? Why, we jews are taking over the world! And it is all going according to plan, yes...mwahahaha.</p>

<p>Although we still suck at sports :-/ </p>

<p>But we had Sandy Koufax!</p>

40

<p>Nato, I missed last Shabbat's "Controlling the Media" seminar. Did I miss anything?</p>