<p>I just wanted to throw in my opinion as a current freshman at Brandeis.</p>
<p>I do not think you would have any issues as a Catholic at Brandeis. I have several Catholic friends who are very observant and attend Mass. Although the Jewish presence on campus is huge and noticeable, other religious communities seem strong as well. I don’t know if you’re interested, but there is an interfaith dialogue group called BUILD of which some of my Christian (and Jewish) friends are members. Its members discuss religious diversity on campus and it is, itself, a very diverse group.</p>
<p>Fitting in should not be a problem. Brandeis is a place where non-Jews and Orthodox Jews can eat together in the same dining hall, which I think is wonderful. I’m an observant Reform Jew and I have friends who are Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, atheist, Catholic, Protestant, deist, nonobservant, and none of the above - and they all hang out together. It’s worth noting that statistically half of your friends will be Jewish, so you need to be comfortable with that. The non-Jews I’ve met here love learning about the Jewish culture and beliefs (and vice versa - there is a ton of discussion here) and seem to have become very comfortable at a “Jew School” very quickly. For example, the other night a few of my Jewish friends and I invited some of our non-Jewish friends to the Sukkah (a hut that Jews eat/sleep in during the week-long holiday Sukkot) and played games and talked until the early hours of the morning; at one point, exactly half the people in there were not Jewish, so we played a Jews v. Non-Jews game of Catch Phrase which everyone thought was hilarious - no one was offended or thought it was a strange/inappropriate idea. I hope that helps illustrate the level of comfort that anybody of any religion feels at Brandeis amidst the large Jewish population.</p>