<p>Bourne, I’m Jewish and it’s interesting / useful information to me. All else being equal, I don’t want my Jewish kids going to a campus where a Jewish kid is a complete oddity, where they’re going to have to field dumb questions. All else being equal, I’d like there to be a decent size Jewish life on the campus for them to have the option to participate in. Is that problematic? Certainly there are a lot of folks who only look at Jesuit universities – their prerogative.</p>
<p>Actually, to some students it does matter–not because they have an “obsession of pedigre,” but because of a specific need. For example, I know of a senior who adheres to a strictly kosher diet and needs to go to a school that can accommodate that. The student told me she is looking at schools with larger Jewish populations, not because she cares about the religion of her classmates, but because she knows that a school with a small Jewish population is more likely to decide down the road that it isn’t cost effective to provide a kosher meal plan. For this particular student, if a school quit providing kosher food, she’d be required to transfer…therefore, she only wishes to considers schools that currently offer kosher food and have a high enough demand for kosher that they’ll continue to provide it.</p>
<p>I know Jewish kids who’ve gone to schools with very small Jewish populations, have felt extremely uncomfortable and faced subtle and not-so-subtle anti-Semitism. I personally didn’t want my d to go to a school at which she had no one who understood why she did not go to class on Yom Kippur, in which she could not find matzah for Passover in the dining hall, or had to travel off-campus to attend services.</p>
<p>Why is it acceptable for a URM to say, “Will I be the only African-American, Hispanic, etc. student on campus?” but not for a Jew?</p>
<p>Because we jews control the money and the media, so we dont get to complain, obviously :rollseyes:</p>
<p><- Proud jew.</p>
<p>On a more serious note, I came from a town close to 60% Jewish in the NE to my midwestern college, where I got a “You’re a jew?! I’ve never met one before!” multiple times a month for the first couple of months.</p>
<p>At least no one asked to see my horns…</p>
<p>Side note: One super fun class was when we were looking at the history of antisemitism (the class was much broader in scope, but it fit). 2 hour lecture on it, and I got to be one of the only people who knew fun facts like what Blood Libel is! I even knew a couple the professor didn’t…</p>
<p>And that was at a solid 17-18% jewish school!</p>
<p>(The 23% would be news to me)</p>
<p>ibnhf1-
Couldn’t disagree more.
To be fair, if religion is an important factor in someone’s choice for college, that is fine by me. With the exception of maybe Brandeis, I can’t think of any other school that has more than a population that is perhaps 1/3 jewish. So, for 99% of the schools, the religious affiliation will be one of a minority affiliation. Students choose religious affiliated schools all the time (eg Notre Dame) and students pick historically black colleges too. If religion, or the opportunity to attend services or have a kosher meal is important to them, thats fine by me. Itis hardly “self destructive”.</p>
<p>My s picked a roommate from a very different background who had never met a jew before in his life. It will be an interesting learning experience for both of them. I applaud them for their growth opportunity.</p>
<p>The only time you ll see the full jewish population at your school is on the high holidays. By my estimates, only about 10% of the jewish students at UW Madison showed up at the Hillel on any given weekend. Good to be Jews.</p>
<p>Some of those graph numbers seem to be low, and the some of the reasons there is difficulty in getting an accurate number has been mentioned here…some non-practicing Jews might not identify themselves as Jewish in any college census, and even some practicing Jews might refrain from identifying themselves as Jewish to avoid repercussions from Admissions and other departments that the Jewish population is getting too far ahead of of its percentage in the general population. </p>
<p>Even Mark Twain, of all people, wrote about the difficulty of getting accurate census figures on Jews for these types of reasons…</p>
<p>[Modern</a> History Sourcebook: Mark Twain: Concerning The Jews, Harper’s Magazine, March, 1898](<a href=“http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1898twain-jews.html]Modern”>http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1898twain-jews.html)</p>
<p>This list is good for people who want to be like them. It is also good for someone like me, who, after living in a highly jewish area for 15 years moved to a place with significantly less jews and liked it much, much more. Unless it’s harvard or Penn, I’ll be looking to avoid highly Jewish schools because I hate the attitudes of a lot of the kids. I will even avoid top schools like NYU because the long island high schools are big grade inflation scams that give everyone a 3.5+ and into tons of elite schools.</p>
<p>Jews in regions other than the northeast I’m fine with, but I can’t stand the typical Northeastern Jew that attends NYU, Brandeis, etc. I hope this doesn’t get me banned, did I mention I’m jewish :P</p>
<p>Yes you did Titan124. But since you’re from LI, I guess other jews should shun you too. Now doesn’t that sound silly?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>He clearly took exception to the majority mindset, not to all people from a particular group.</p>
<p>arbiter123, college was the first time I had ever met anyone who was jewish! My children know of a few jewish kids at their school, but it is quite rare around here too.</p>
<p>I guess I just hope that our kids can get past the focus of ethnic background and enjoy meeting kids from all backgrounds and not have social boundaries. I never liked that kind of focus and find it limiting. I certainly did not want to sound harsh and I am aware that I did. College is a very exciting time and a great oppurtunity to expand your horizons for people of all religions etc. Good luck and enjoy!!</p>
<p>^ I think one needs to be aware of social and cultural differences in order to appreciate diversity, and in order to fully understand one’s college classmates. Pretending that such differences do not exist is not a path to understanding. And the data seem to suggest a rather shocking lack of ethnic diversity at some prominent schools.</p>
<p>Again, rearranging OP’s data (and taking the data at face value), here’s a list of how the top 55 LACs stack up on a measure of “Jewish-friendliness”—the percentage of Jewish students who actually attend.</p>
<p>Name Rank % Jewish</p>
<ol>
<li>Barnard 26 43</li>
<li>Reed 53 30</li>
<li>Sarah Lawrence 45 29</li>
<li>Wesleyan 10 27</li>
<li>Oberlin 22 27</li>
<li>Haverford 9 22</li>
<li>Vassar 12 21</li>
<li>Swarthmore 3 19</li>
<li>Scripps 26 18</li>
<li>Skidmore 48 18</li>
<li>Bryn Mawr 20 17</li>
<li>Amherst 2 16</li>
<li>Pomona 7 15</li>
<li>Colgate 16 15</li>
<li>Union 39 15</li>
<li>Pitzer 51 14</li>
<li>Middlebury 5 12</li>
<li>Bard 36 12</li>
<li>Carleton 6 11</li>
<li>Trinity 30 11</li>
<li>Lafayette 30 11</li>
<li>Williams 1 10</li>
<li>Bowdoin 7 10</li>
<li>Claremont McKenna 12 10</li>
<li>Harvey Mudd 14 10</li>
<li>Smith 19 10</li>
<li>Colby 20 10</li>
<li>Kenyon 32 10</li>
<li>Connecticut College 39 10</li>
<li>Franklin and Marshall 41 10</li>
<li>Hamilton 17 9</li>
<li>Wellesley 4 9</li>
<li>Bates 23 9</li>
<li>Bucknell 29 9</li>
<li>Richmond 34 9</li>
<li>Dickinson 41 9</li>
<li>Occidental 36 7</li>
<li>Whitman 36 7</li>
<li>Grinnell 14 6</li>
<li>Macalester 24 6</li>
<li>Colorado College 26 6</li>
<li>Davidson 10 5</li>
<li>Washington and Lee 17 4</li>
<li>Mount Holyoke 24 4</li>
<li>Denison 48 4</li>
<li>Gettysburg 45 2</li>
<li>Rhodes 45 1</li>
<li>DePauw 48 1</li>
<li>Wheaton (MA) 55 1</li>
<li>Holy Cross 32 <0.5***</li>
<li>U of the South 34 <0.5**</li>
<li>Furman 41 <0.5**</li>
<li>Centre 44 <0.5***</li>
<li>Wabash 51 <0.5**</li>
<li>Lawrence 53 <0.5**</li>
<li>St. Olaf 55 <0.5**</li>
</ol>
<p>Just to be clear: although I am not Jewish, in my book “Jewish-friendliness” is a positive attribute in a school, reflecting the degree to which the school has overcome ancient anti-Semitic biases and now is attractive to, and actually enrolls, large numbers of Jewish students.</p>
<p>On the whole, top LACs appear ot be somewhat less “Jewish-friendly” than top research universities. But there are important exceptions. A number of New York schools (all women’s schools or formerly women’s schools, as it turns out) rank in the top 10—Barnard, Sarah Lawrence, Vassar, and Skidmore. Three additional New York schools–Colgate, Union, and Bard–make the top 20. The “Quaker consortium” schools–Swarthmore, Haverford, and Bryn Mawr–make a strong showing, as do several of the Claremont Colleges (Scripps, Pomona, and Pitzer). Reed, Oberlin, and Wesleyan—all schools with “quirky” and “intellectual” reputations—are standouts. New England LACs as a group lag (apart from Wesleyan and Amherst), faring not much better than LACs in the South and Midwest.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>In a country that is 2.1% Jewish, you think that 9% and 6%, respectively, are low? Trust me, MIT has a very active Jewish community and is very Jewish-friendly. Can’t speak for Caltech, though I suspect they’d be similar.</p>
<p>I <em>am</em> slightly surprised that it’s only 9%. That could mean that my own social group at MIT was demographically atypical. Or it could have to do with there being a lot of Jewish-raised or ethnically Jewish folks who don’t identify as Jewish (part of the plurality of MIT students who are atheists or agnostics) - the idea of the secular Jew is accepted in many circles, but not everyone who qualifies actually wants that label.</p>
<p>Edited to add: Also, in response to some of the comments in this thread, I have to take issue with the idea that % of Jews enrolled is a measure of Jewish-friendliness. I understand that people don’t necessarily want to go to schools where they are an overwhelmingly tiny minority. But a school that is 12% Jewish is not necessarily more friendly toward Jewish folks than one that is 8% Jewish, and some schools’ populations are skewed by their being in states with very high or low Jewish populations and getting a lot of in-state kids.</p>
<ul>
<li>A half-Ashkenazi atheist MIT alum</li>
</ul>
<p>^ Whether 9% and 6% are “low” might depend in part on the size of the school. CalTech has a total undergrad enrollment of about 900 students; 6% of that figure is 54, or 13.5 per class. That’s a pretty small Jewish enrollment. Whether it’s “too” low is a matter of personal preference, but I suspect some Jewish kids would find there’s not a sufficient critical mass of students sharing their religious and/or cultural background. For others it wouldn’t matter in the least.</p>
<p>MIT, on the other hand, has almost 4,200 undergrads; 9% of that figure is 368, probably enough to provide a critical mass.</p>
<p>I agree that the difference between 12% and 8% is probably not all that great, but the different between, let’s say, Davidson’s 5% and Swarthmore’s 19% could be rather substantial. Both are highly regarded LACs, similarly sized (Davidson just a bit bigger at 1674 undergrads to Swarthmore’s 1491). Davidson’s 5% Jewish enrollment translates to 84 Jewish students, or 21 per class. Swarthmore’s 19% translates to 283 Jewish students, or about 71 per class. For some applicants, that difference might matter.</p>
<p>Titan124 – I don’t know, it sounds more like you’re put off by “New Yorkness” more than by a religious affiliation.</p>
<p>That reminds me of the line from Terms of Endearment. The helpful fellow at the grocery store (I think it was John Lithgow) said either to or about the rude cashier: “must be from New York”, equating pushy rudeness with New Yorkness.</p>
<p>I don’t think that was a code word for jewishness. I really believe people from New York of every religious belief have different norms of behavior… that’s neither good nor bad, just different from most other parts of the U.S.</p>
<p>Jessie, I suspect that MIT’s and Caltech’s relatively lower percentages of Jewish students are related to the relatively lower percentages of non-Asian students as a whole compared to other schools.</p>
<p>Not too many people really wear their religion on their sleeves here. We do have a Caltech Hillel, though, so there’s certainly a community for that. Honestly, though, I don’t think that many people care too much. They’re kind of focused on other things.</p>
<p>“I guess I just hope that our kids can get past the focus of ethnic background and enjoy meeting kids from all backgrounds and not have social boundaries. I never liked that kind of focus and find it limiting. I certainly did not want to sound harsh and I am aware that I did. College is a very exciting time and a great oppurtunity to expand your horizons for people of all religions etc. Good luck and enjoy!!”</p>
<p>A student can want to meet kids from all backgrounds and also want to have access to their cultural or religious community. Take my kids (please! 
). We’re Jewish: keep kosher, regularly attend services, celebrate pretty much all Jewish holidays, etc etc. Both kids are are very involved in our synagogue’s youth group, are enrolled in supplemental hebrew programs, and attend a Jewish summer camp. </p>
<p>They do not, however, attend a Jewish day school. They both attend public magnets that are highly diverse, both ethnically and socioeconomically. Their friendships are similarly diverse. </p>
<p>Given all that, I think that they might feel somewhat isolated if they ended up attending a college where there wasn’t something of a Jewish community. They may end up surprising us, of course, “rebelling” entirely and saying they want something New and Different. In either case, the % of Jewish students is going to be important to them.</p>