<p>Thought this was interesting. On Friday, the University of Oklahoma’s Hillel will be hosting students from the University of Maryland’s Hillel who came out to OK as part of an alternate Winter Break trip via the Jewish Disaster Relief Corps. Last week, the OU Hillel and temples in the Oklahoma City area hosted students from University of Rhode Island and San Francisco State University who were also volunteering with the JDRC. </p>
<p>How would a public university with the appropriate infrastructure in place go about attracting more Jewish students? In the case of Oklahoma, there is already a Hillel building and a student rabbi who often leads services. IMO, the Jewish population at the school could dramatically increase if it targeted Jewish students in Texas who can’t get into UT-Austin. I’m struggling to think of any way to publicize that yes, Oklahoma does have Jewish students and a much more integrated Hillel than most of the Texas schools.</p>
<p>whenhen- maybe growth is by word of mouth and threads like this one. Alabama seems to be attracting students from Georgia. It has a pretty high profile on CC. Hopefully Oklahoma will grow in a similar way.</p>
<p>Word of mouth, publicity and press releases. Oklahoma should be sending out a press release on the programs you just described - to every newspaper in TX - to Temples and Jewish newspapers in the area as well. They should have a print brochure on their Hillel and Jewish programming and send it to every guidance counselor in TX. Have it available at college fairs and in the admissions office. Have an easy to find webpage on Jewish life at Oklahoma - include Hillel, any Jewish studies classes, etc. Offer to have prospective Jewish students paired with a current Jewish student for lunch when they visit.</p>
<p>Great suggestions from rockvillemom. Here are a few more:</p>
<p>They should also blog about it, then share on their social media and send links to all sorts of Jewish websites, blogs, etc; talk to the editors at Reform Judaism magazine about a feature for their college issue, such as up and coming schools for Jewish students.</p>
<p>Interesting suggestions. I’ll try to bring them up during the next open forum. </p>
<p>RVM, it’s estimated that OU has around 300 Jewish students, although maybe only 50-60 are involved with Hillel. Because Oklahoma is a public university which only just started using the Common App, it’s quite difficult to even ballpark the number of Jewish students. </p>
<p>I don’t think OU offers Ladino or Yiddish as actual languages (seems that students read ladino/yiddish lit that’s been translated to English) although it does offer at least three courses in Hebrew each semester, all of which have twelve or fewer students enrolled.</p>
<p>It is so nice to know there are places that Ladino is being kept alive. I wish I learned it as a kid and now all the speakers in my family are gone. So in my family it died with my generation.</p>
<p>The compiled college list is an amazing resource. Would it be possible to make it a “sticky” or somehow easily visible to new people who can use it as a starting point in their college search?</p>
<p>I’d like to thank RVM who started this thread and everyone who contributed to it, and people who PM’d me.</p>
<p>We just paid the deposit on my D #1 choice college. She applied ED as was suggested here, and heard back before the winter break (I didn’t want to post until all the paperwork was done). We are both extremely pleased and excited. D had very successful application process overall: accepted to 6 colleges (2 on the master list, another one or two mentioned somewhere in this thread but didn’t make the list b/c of Jewish life criteria), deferred from 1 on the list (withdrew), rejected from 1 not on the list, and received “likely” letter from another one not on the list (withdrew). I consider it a big success, and very grateful for finding this message board and for everybody’s support. </p>
<p>Good luck to everyone who is still waiting to hear back from colleges.</p>
<p>My sweet S2 has just returned from a looongggg weekend staffing the BBYO NRE retreat/convention.</p>
<p>He hasn’t visited a pillow since Thursday night. The teenagers today are just as “energetic” as he was a few years back…</p>
<p>One interesting comment–the BBYO staff is like a “BBYO chapter” in that there are so many deep friendships formed among the staff/advisers. </p>
<p>He also commented on the jobs networking that takes place. It might be somewhat of a DC thing, but a lot of the advisors have teens who are the children of parents with very interesting jobs and lots of connections, and they are happy to use them for the benefit of their teens’ mentors. My son mentioned that he is introducing a female advisor to the parent of one of his teens next week.</p>
<p>I wish my daughter would get a job teaching at Washington Hebrew–the connections there must be great, too! Unfortunately, she claims to be too busy.</p>
<p>Boysx3 my daughter is very involved in BBYO (packing for execs and IC in a few weeks). She met the most amazing people and now is planning to attend APAC in March. Just wished it was not her last semester in BBYO.</p>
<p>ddahwan, she will see my son at all those events (he will be attending AIPAC in a professional capacity).</p>
<p>all of my sons have commented on how BBYO has continued to pay benefits in their adult lives. So many skills they learned through they years–event planning, public speaking/presentation skills, mentoring…All 3 have mentioned how they used some of their BBYO experiences in interviews for their first internships; at least they each had something concrete to talk about, discussing real life skills and life lesson, instead of just “I was president of French club…but we didn’t do anything…”</p>
<p>As adults, they have not been at all surprised at how it continues to play in their lives. All 3 are still close with friends they met from all over the country, and it’s interesting how they help each other out.</p>
<p>H commented last night on how it seems that most of our sons’ friends from BBYO seem to be having better-than-average results coming out of college, and he was speculating that maybe it is because they have learned to present themselves well, and also seem to have a knack for actually doing things/becoming involved in leadership rather than just drifting through four years of college. And, of course, the network is unreal…</p>