Yeah. I thought SMU seemed odd too. I personally don’t know any Jewish students there. The other schools listed in the article plus Duke are very popular with Jewish students in my area of the country, and Wake Forest has been getting more popular in recent years as well. As I said, I don’t generally take the NY post at face value.
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Small, but there is a community of around 350 Jewish students at SMU.
Jewish Life - SMU (Southern Methodist University).
Surprising to me, SMU’s largest religious group are Catholics, 26%.
Looks like Wake has around 400 Jewish students, bigger percentage of total students than SMU
Wake Forest University - Hillel International.
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Well yes, of course there are some Jewish students at SMU- about 3% of the students, which would be more than at nearby Texas Christian U or even Baylor-but I would never have considered it a " destination " for Jewish applicants. Maybe that will change now.
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Blockquote quite homogeneous religiously
Blockquote
I was actually surprised at SMU’s religious diversity. Methodists and Catholics combined are only 44% of the students.
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By homogenous I was referring to the 85% Christian student body.
My Jewish friend met her Jewish husband at SMU and they had a great experience there. They would like their Jewish daughters to go there. While numbers may be small(ish), if it is an active and vibrant community, it makes up for numbers. I went to a school with a higher percentage of Jewish students (over 20%) but never felt much of a Jewish presence (Except when hanging out at the Jewish fraternity. I married the President. surprisingly, a non-Jew).
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I do not doubt SMU would welcome more applicants of all faiths.
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Ok. Got you. We’re Catholic but never lump other denominations when we’re assessing the religious climate at colleges but I can understand your comment now.
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I’ll only speak for myself, but I don’t think anyone meant to suggest that SMU would not be welcoming to Jews. The other colleges mentioned in the NY post article have much larger Jewish populations and have been popular college destinations for Jews for decades. In that context, listing SMU as an Ivy alternative for Jews is a bit surprising. As an aside, Emory is also a Methodist school and while I don’t know the current demographics, I’d be willing to bet that there are as many Jewish students as there are Methodists.
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When my daughter applied 3 years ago, we decided she wouldn’t apply to any schools that had large antizionist populations. That wasn’t an environment in which I could see my daughter being happy. Those schools included the Claremont schools, Bryn Mawr, Haverford, University of Chicago, and a bunch of others. I wanted to make sure that at least the schools would be balanced with a strong Jewish population. At the smaller schools, I thought it would be especially brutal for her to have to put up with that b.s. I also didn’t want to give those schools my hard-earned money.
I don’t see people not applying to Ivy League schools because of this.
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Do posters see concerns about campus climate a legitimate reason to back out of an ED agreement? To keep other apps open to wait and see how things play out over a few months? So much has changed since those ED apps were due.
If there are concerns the ED application should get pulled right now. (The group of schools in the news haven’t released decisions yet)
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I guess that is the right answer. We are still in the phase of hoping everything settles down. Thank you.
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The answer probably depends upon specifics. Specific incidents giving rise to concerns as well as specific reasons for applying ED to that particular school.
Some claims have been overblown/exaggerated, while some schools may give rise to more serious concerns.
Without more information, I suggest leaving an ED application in place and reevaluating the situation once an acceptance is received because fear for a student’s safety is a reasonable basis for backing out of an ED agreement.
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Count my DS24 as one of them. He did not apply to a few Ivies because of the hostile environment.
But, yeah, I agree, I don’t think we’ll see a significant drop in apps, either from Jews or generally.
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My daughter also crossed Ivies off of her list…more because I dont even want to send them the $85. (they are super reach schools for her.)
I know at least one East Coast prep school - I believe it was previously a Christian school and is now non-denominational - explicitly has told its families that if they want to pull or reneg on ED applications due to antisemitism or similar recent campus climate issues, that the school would support that decision. I’m not enough in that world to know if that has spread to other schools.
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But did the prep school inform the colleges of that? Unlikely .
100% campus climate is a legitimate concern. I would and have contacted the school’s Hillel director and asked what the climate is like on campus. You might also ask to speak with Jewish students to ask them what they think about the climate. Hopefully they would be honest with you. There won’t be a perfect school, unfortunately. Some schools have more student activists than others.
FWIW:
Over 8,500 students applied to Penn through the Early Decision program this year, according to the University’s announcement — an increase over last year’s total of over 8,000 applicants.
6,009 early decision applicants for the class of 2028, …the third largest early decision applicant pool in Columbia’s history and an almost 5 percent increase
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