My daughter is gay and Jewish and applying to Graduate school also. I will have to ask but she’s not afraid to write about any topic that puts her in the best light for getting into grad school. She will have DEI covered,if needed .I can reach out if I find out something useful.
Yep. I’ll add that PhD programs are first and foremost training and preparation for academia, and statements about commitment to fostering diversity and inclusion are required for most tenure-track jobs these days (and quite a few visiting/temporary positions). As you noted, committees are looking for a track record of active commitment.
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@LastOne5 I assume this is for undergrad. I just read a great essay about being half-Jewish and another cultural background for the other parent, and the mix of cultures that resulted. I don’t want to say any more to preserve privacy but it definitely answered the prompt about diversity for an undergrad application.
As Jewish refugee from Eastern Europe I always tell my children that it’s never beneficial to bring up fact of being jewish to non Jews. Specially now. Definitely no.
With similar background, not sure I agree, even these days.
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It’s terrible to read your fear for your kids that you think that is necessary. My boys being Hispanic - and obviously so - I would hope they’d not hide their identity I’m even if possible. I cannot put myself in your shoes but sending you a hug - your children will be okay. No, they will thrive in college!
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I have never agreed with the assertion offered here that “If they don’t accept me for who I am, then that is not a school I would want to attend.” This question first arose when my ridiculously gifted but severely dyslexic son was applying to college. Should he disclose his learning disability? The fact that he had done extraordinarily well despite his disability might not matter to them: “Well, he has fabulous grades/SATs/ACTs and recommendations, but who knows if he can do the work here at Seriously Self-Impressed University where the competition is so much stronger. Let’s not take a chance on him and take someone with admittedly less upside potential but looks more like our standard admit.” In contrast, the kid might do fine at the school. Why let the biases of adcoms dicate the kid’s choices. The kids and parents can evaluate whether it will be a good environment for the kid. So, I would not advocate mentioning disabilities in most applications.
As far as I can tell, Jewishness is not considered an addition to diversity in any of the institutions I have been part of. To the extent Jewish identity is raised, Jews are seen as white and rich and hence people diversity programs are not intended to advantage (and by implication are intended to disadvantage). As such, I would not recommend mentioning Jewish identity in the diversity essay.
It is also worth asking who the the admissions committee officers are. This paragraph is a little speculative, so bear with me. My guess is that they are not likely to be representative of the institution as a whole but are more likely to be liberal arts majors or HR types. I’m guessing that, for example, there are very few computer science or engineering or math majors working on Ivy adcoms. I have no data on this, but suspect that the superior job prospects for those majors will leave them underrepresented on adcoms, whereas history, English, and gender studies majors are more likely to be overrepresented (at my alma mater, history and English majors were the ones who took jobs in admissions although they often did not stay for too many years). I suspect that the junior folks who make up most of the admissions officers, reporting to a Director and maybe and Associate Director, will tend to be relatively young. I’d also guess, given the bent of the last couple of decades, that they would be more to the left – adcoms seemed to see their mission as doing social engineering via admissions policies. Given that political bent, I think there will be bias against Jews among some adcom members, especially in today’s political context.
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I would strongly recommend to my child that they not reveal that they are Jewish in any application. These “diversity” essays are so that URMs can signal who they are to admissions committees, for the SC decision loophole. For everyone else, the only right answer is how they have studied with, worked with, and served underserved URM communities, and will continue to do so in college, and in their life’s work.
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I think writing about Jewish heritage is fine. If colleges reject you because of that, you don’t want to be there.
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I think we have to be prepared for a world in which almost all universities are a somewhat hostile environment for Jews. We will likely want our kids to avoid the most toxic schools (a number of California state universities and Canadian universities are among those that probably qualify as toxic). We will still want our kids to attend good schools (I’m past this as both of my kids have finished school) even though the environment is not terrific. I would not want to diminish their chances of admission by self-identifying as Jewish. I’d rather have the parent and child decide whether or not that is a school the kid should attend, rather than some 27 year old Sociology or Gender Studies major who is now working as an admissions officer who is implicitly biased against Jews.
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My kid got into an Ivy this past cycle and I can assure you he mentioned nothing about being Jewish. We self-selected out of the more toxic environments, including Harvard. I wouldn’t be able to look our friends in the face and tell them we sent our kid to Harvard.
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Agree with so many above. If being Jewish is meaningful (as it is to me) and your student felt it important, than they should write about it. And, if an institution uses that to filter them out, then you don’t want to be associated with that school.
Sad is the fact many elite institutions have so clearly shown their antisemitic bias, and hope there is more pressure brought to them (reduced federal, state, and third party financial support). Not applying to them is also a statement.
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I understand this, but I think that it is sad. No student or parent of a student should need to deal with this.
One thing that occurs to me is that it is relatively normal for any large organization to run into issues that somehow relate to bias or imperfect leadership. This is because they are run by people, and people are not perfect. Among small businesses financial reality forces the business to either get its act together or disappear. Large famous universities however no matter how badly run are going to continue on for a long time based on their many smart people who are doing a very wide assortment of studies and research and teaching much of which has value, and also based on the momentum of their reputations. Perhaps this is a reason to avoid contributing funds to an alma mater that already has north of $20,000,000,000 in their endowment – if they mess up in the future this huge endowment just allows them to continue to function for longer without having to get their act together.
Fortunately there are many very good universities and we can just go somewhere else. At least so far we have been able to find appropriate schools for us and our children (we still have one more to go – our youngest is applying to graduate schools this round). We can all vote with our feet.
And hiring managers can vote with their hiring practices: If the strongest students attend less famous public universities, then we hire from less famous public universities.
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I agree.
And people are voting with their feet. In this era of year-over-year application volume increases, Harvard had a 18% decline in REA volume. That’s really significant. However, I’m not naive enough to think that will last. People have short memories and Harvard is Harvard. And its endowment is large enough to weather many, many storms. This too shall pass for them.
All we can do is show our dissapproval by where we choose to apply.
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It’s amazing to think the world’s #1 minority less than 1% of the global population is not granted the same benefits as other minorities. At least in America. We have diversity candidates (blacks and hispanics, we know what college deem asians - the wrong minority), LGBTQ++++ , disabled and everything else. But Jews because of some success are not a minority to a college or anywhere else for that matter. What are they all scared of?
We included Jewish activities on the common app? As far as essay prior to Oct. 7th an essay about Judaism would be rather bland. It still may be rather bland and won’t make a difference one way or the other. Perhaps admissions will know because of last name anyway. But as for the question “would you” abso-f–cking lutely would identify etc. We cannot stand down to colleges or anyone else. This is not 1938 “kristalnacht” this is America. Every group gets tossed under the bus and then it starts over again. Look at Tommy Cutlets from the New York Giants, that is stereotypical derogatory commentary and who cares. Good luck to your kid and stand tall and proud as many other jews are showing. Don’t hide.
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Well said
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Reminder that there is only one place on the forum where discussion of race and college admission is allowed, and that is in the political forum. Feel free to move the discussion there. Posts that do not comply will be deleted without comment.
I don’t hide my Judaism at all. I do think that Jews have been extraordinarily successful whenever the societies in which they lived did not constrain them and that is a source of pride.
But, the question is different. The question is whether a college applicant should talk about their Judaism/Jewish identify/Jewish activities in an essay on diversity. If I were advising a student and the student wanted to maximize the probability of admission to a particular university, I’d advise against including that information. First, as @nyotaimori also points out, Jewish identify is not considered an addition to diversity. Second, admissions officers tend to be younger (I’ve looked at a few Ivies’ staffs) and probably tend to be humanities/social science majors and may well, in the aftermath of Oct 7, have an anti-Jewish bias. With some rare exceptions, I don’t think sharing a Jewish identity will help and there is a reasonable chance it will hurt. So, I’d urge the student to maximize the probability of admission by not disclosing in that essay (or in the application). I would not advocate hiding their identify if they choose to attend.
@DadTwoGirls, Harvard’s endowment is actually $50 billion. It is huge, but the university relies on it to run some basic activities so the decline in endowment they suffered during one of the market crashes really did cause belt-tightening there. They drew on the endowment to construct an entirely new campus for science and engineering in Allston next to the business school. I was at a meeting there a couple of weeks ago and they didn’t stint on the construction expenses.
I have tried to think about how to donate money differently this year. I’m not a big donor anywhere but attended three of HYPSM and usually give money, especially to my undergrad alma mater. One thought was instead of my normal donation, I should donate and ask that my donation be directed specifically towards reducing anti-semitism on campus. I have always given money to ADL, but I am wondering if there are other organizations I should give money to in dealing with anti-Semitism.
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