Colleges for the Jewish "B" student (Part 1)

Parents Forum
1001

<p>NYC is an island with limited space, but if we widen our net as much as you are for Philadelphia you get:</p>

<p>NYU
Columbia
Fordham
Brooklyn College (LIU)
Hunter (with dorms)
Pace
Manhattan
St. Johns
Queens (new dorm space)
Hofstra
Adelphi
CW Post
Purchase
Sarah Lawrence
Drew
NY Tech (in NYC and on LI)
NY Polytechnic
Stevens Institute
Rutgers
Barnard
Yeshiva
Stern College for Women
Molloy
Marymount
Princeton
SUNY Purchase
John Jay
Baruch
School of Visual Arts
Pratt
Parsons
Columbia SEAS
Columbia School of General Studies
Eugene Lang</p>

<p>and just a bit further Vassar, Wesleyan, Yale, and even Penn.</p>

<p>Princeton, for example, is a 45 minute train ride.</p>

<p>I think NY’ers think more in terms of the tri-state area than NYC. </p>

<p>Rich NY’ers also like sending their spawn off the island for a while before they settle down with a seat on the stock exchange or managing a hedge fund.</p>

<p>But in terms of the big guns let’s look at the match-up, although schools aren’t really comparable.</p>

<p>Boston: Harvard, MIT, BU, BC, Tufts, Brandeis, Wellesley</p>

<p>NY: Columbia, Princeton, Columbia SEAS, NYU, Fordham, Eugene Lang, Sarah Lawrence, Barnard. Missing is a school life Tufts and maybe Brandeis, but there are others not represented in Boston.</p>

<p>Phila: Penn, Swat, Haverford, Bryn Mawr, Villanova.</p>

<p>Please forgive me for being a defensive NY’er. I’m an idiot. Truly. Still, I’ll let my post stand.</p>

1002

<p>As an NY’er, you should know that NYC is not an island. Manahattan and Staten Island are separate islands; Brooklyn and Queens and part of Long Island; and the Bronx is not an island at all.</p>

<p>And including Penn in NYC is silly, especially since you do not include Columbia in Philadelphia. Princeton, meanwhile, is equidistant between the two cities. Nor are Yale or Wesleyan particularly close enough to NYC to merit inclusion–unless you want to add Johns Hopkins, Goucher, Franklin & Marshall; the University of Delaware; Lehigh; Lafayette; Muhlenberg; etc to Philadelphia.</p>

<p>I could go on, but will settle for noting you include Columbia, Columbia SEAS and Barnard as if they were separate universities, but Penn only once.</p>

1003

<p>Also: Cooper Union, Webb Institute, Lehigh & Lafayette, (proximate to both cities) West Point, Bard.</p>

<p>I agree pretty light on the close-in Tufts & Brandeis analogs, a glaring omission and not sure why. Also light on the direct Swarthmore/ Haverford high-quality LAC analogs, the NYC variants are all former women’s schools, with residual effects, and/or further out.</p>

1004

<p>Not true. On Metro North Yale and Wesleyan are very close to Manhattan, which is of course what I meant by island. You knew that.</p>

1005

<p>I can get to New Haven on Metro North, don’t know about Middletown though. Mapquest says 2hr 20 minute drive.</p>

1006

<p>NYU is the equivalent to Tufts and Brandeis, albeit it without a campus.</p>

<p>Think real estate price and availability and I think you’ll have your answer about the NYC options!</p>

1007

<p>Entrance stats of incoming NYU students may be equivalent to Brandeis students, these days (which BTW is a huge change fom my day), but save this one respect the actual schools themselves do not seem that highly similar to me. NYU is very substantially larger, right in the city as opposed to a suburb, no campus. It seems to me much more like BU than these other two schools. IMO.</p>

1008

<p>Vassar is also at the end of a NYC commuter line…and…that gets you into the Brandeis/Tufts range of schools…</p>

<p>What about Sarah Lawrence…isn’t that close to the same category?</p>

<p>(Getting off topic for the B student, though!)</p>

1009

<p>Last sentence of #1003, no further hijacking here.</p>

1010

<p>This thread has been a great help to me so far in adding some schools to the list for D to consider. The problem is, we have a ton of safety schools as well as many reach schools. I would like to put a few more match schools on her list. She is actually an A/A- student, but the B schools would be perfect, because hopefully there would be some merit aid for her. </p>

<p>Here is what I have on the match list so far for her:
Elon University (thanks rockvillemom, if not for this thread, I would not have had it on the list!)
Syracuse University
University of Miami
Northeastern University
Tulane University</p>

<p>The school must have more than 3,000 students, preferably larger, but not too huge. I think the 5,000 - 15,000 range would be good, based on what she has said. We would prefer a minimum 10% Jewish population, but like Elon, if it’s an active Jewish population, we would consider it.</p>

<p>She has two very specific interests, but I can check to see if the schools offer that. She can go to school anywhere up/down the east coast, we are looking at the midwest as far as St. Louis. </p>

<p>Any thoughts?</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

1011

<p>Don’t forget state universities - UW-Madison for example has a thriving Hillel, and I would bet that many others do, too.</p>

1012

<p>There is a famous New Yorker cartoon cover on which the artist Steinberg drew what he entitled “A New Yorker’s View of the World”, in which the distance from Fifth Avenue to Park Avenue is equal to the distance between First Avenue and Chicago. In my 12 years of living in–and loving-- NYC, I understood how accurately this represented many New Yorkers.</p>

<p>Mythmom, with respect, you turn this view on its head when it suits you, making Wesleyan–over 100 miles from New York City and served by MetroNorth–“very close to Manhattan” while limiting other cities to their town limits for comparative purposes. I did not find Yale “very close to Manhattan”, either, when I was there–it is 80 miles away, a long trip on MetroNorth–and within a few miles of the distance from Philadelphia of Johns Hopkins, which you do not regard as close to Philadelphia. Note, too, that your Boston calculations are similarly one-sided, omitting, for example Holy Cross and WPI, only 44 miles from Bston–bu then, by your standard, Boston could also claim Amherst, Holyoke, Smith…</p>

<p>Monydad grasped my point much better–NYC does not have Brandeis, Tufts, Haverford, Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, etc close suburban high quality schools or even nearly as many good b/B+ options as its population should merit.</p>

1013

<p>I am being a bad, bad student since every opportunity I get to go on CC, I do, and keep avoiding work on my dissertation. At this rate, there’s a good chance I’ll be stuck at Chapter Three until S is happily settled into some dorm somewhere in the Fall of 2011!</p>

<p>Sometimes (usually) we parents put the kid first, even if it’s to our own detriment, and that’s what I’m doing… but if the kid ain’t happy…</p>

<p>Researching financial and academic safeties and matches close to NYC, I have found Purchase, where S’s stats make it highly likely that he’d get into their Liberal Arts program. Stonybrook looks just a little tougher academically in terms of admissions, but may be a high-ish match. I don’t know that I have any questions about these possibilities, but if any of you have insights, please do share.</p>

1014

<p>EmmyBet - we have a bunch of public schools on the list, but for the most part, they are just too big. UW - Madison at 40,000 plus students, would not be a good fit for her.</p>

<p>calv1n - have you looked at SUNY New Paltz? I have heard good things about it.</p>

1015

<p>mythmom, I’d love to know a little bit more about Oxford College of Emory. Emory itself has lots of Jewish kids (from NY/NJ, I think, but probably from the South also). I’d never heard of Oxford College until someone suggested it for ShawD. Her college counselor was very excited about OC of E and said that that was a great addition to the list. The counselor put it in as a “Likely” as opposed to “Possible” or “Reach,” so I wondered based upon your description whether the kids feel like second class citizens. We read the info on the website but wonder about how it works. We’re planning to include that in a trip this fall, but would love any insights. [I’m assuming it has a significant Jewish population].</p>

1016

<p>mdmom…,</p>

<p>DS1 attended UVM (approx. 10k students) and did very well - has graduated, gainfully employed, still with ties to the U. Spent a year living in Hillel housing and enjoyed it very much. Great Uni - def. match/safety for the B+ student and a beautiful setting. Great learning opportunities for the students who want them. A solid solid Uni. Bonus if kiddo likes to ski!</p>

1017

<p>I agree, sort of, that Yale is too far from Manhattan to be considered close to Manhattan (and ditto for Wesleyan, which is 20 miles and a separate bus ride farther away). But when I was at Yale we definitely considered ourselves in the New York region. I probably got into the city 2-3 times a semester, and worked there one summer and one semester off. I know kids at Princeton, Bard and Vassar have the same kind of attitude. It’s something of a pain to get into the city, but they do it on a regular basis.</p>

<p>The relationship of Johns Hopkins to Philadelphia is totally different. First, if students are going to go somewhere other than Baltimore, the first choice will be Washington, 30 minutes away, not Philadelphia at closer to two hours. I’m not certain that Philly really offers anything you can’t get in Baltimore-Washington anyway. Second, while Amtrak works for travel between the two cities, there isn’t any cheap commuter-type rail service, and I don’t think you can take the cheap Megabuses between the two cities. That makes a huge difference.</p>

1 Like
1018

<p>I think that one should stick to schools for the Jewish B student since that is what this thread is about.</p>

1019

<p>True, but know Jewish B students at Hopkins, Vassar, and Bard. What people mean by “B student” covers an very wide range.</p>

1020

<p>New York- NYU, SUNYs,Rochester(reach), Union
Pennsylvania, Muhlenburg, Gettysburg, Franklin& Marshall, Lafayette(reach?), Drexel, Penn State, U PITT-very large and active hillel, lots of kosher dining options
MA- BU, UMASS, Clark, Brandeis(reach?-admissions better than in the past), Bentley, Babson-business, Northeastern-large Jewish population from NY, NJ areas
Rhode Island- URI
Connecticut, Connecticut College, Quinnipiac,UCONN,UHartford
UMaryland, UDelaware, UWisconsin, UVM
JMU,GWU,Miami
check out the hillel sites, see what schools offer kosher dining and check out what types of religious groups for students to join are available</p>