The pick-a-college scrum can be overwhelming, with so many choices – Hillel International has given us a way to narrow it down and we’ve come up with seven ways to narrow it down from there.
If you’d like to think of future college picks Jewishly, Hillel International offers a great resource for making sure you pick a college while well informed.
The Hillel College Guide for spring 2016 includes two lists, one of public schools and the other of private schools – each with 60 schools, for a total of 120. The lists are of schools that have the most Jewish undergraduate students in the nation. Picking a school from among the top 120 for Jewish population is nearly a guarantee of good resources, activities and campus life.
You can visit Hillel.org/College-Guide for full access to the data and to order a free copy of the guide, but we’ve crunched and localized it right here for residents of the Badger state. Here are seven things worth noting for choosing a college:
- There’s only one school on the list in Wisconsin.
University of Wisconsin–Madison doesn’t just stand alone as our state’s only representation among the 120 most Jewish schools in the nation, it’s got the seventh-largest Jewish population on the nationwide public schools list. With an estimated 4,200 Jewish undergraduates, about 13 percent of students are Jews.
Resources at the school reflect the existence of a large Jewish student body, with several Jewish-themed sororities and fraternities, an active Madison Hillel with its own building and still more organizations, like Jewish Experience of Madison. Nobody can deny that other Wisconsin colleges have great Jewish programming and many Jewish students, but if you’re picking a school in this state and seeking some Jewish life, it’s hard to go wrong with UW-Madison.
- There are four schools in Illinois.
For students looking to get away from home without going too far, four schools in Illinois make the list. University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is 9 percent Jewish with 3,000 Jewish undergraduates. Northwestern University is 15 percent with 1,400; University of Chicago is 14 percent with 800 and DePaul University is 2 percent with 400.
What? Two percent makes the list of 120? Yes, because DePaul has more Jewish students than many other schools, but with more than 16,000 undergraduates overall, it’s a large school. The top 120 is a list of schools with the most Jewish undergraduates in raw numbers, not on a percentage basis, which leads us to our next point …
- On a percentage basis, what are the top schools?
Thinking in terms of percentages, we can consider which schools are arguably most Jewish in overall campus life. Nationwide, the most Jewish student bodies are Yeshiva University (100 percent), Brandeis University (47 percent) and Barnard College (33 percent). Those are all in the northeast. They also happen to all be private schools. The state schools nationwide with the highest percentages of undergraduates as Jews are City University of New York, Brooklyn College (28 percent) and Queens College (25 percent), which are all in New York, plus University of Michigan at College Park (21 percent).
We’ve also just got to mention tiny Goucher College near Baltimore. With a 9-to-1 student-faculty ratio and required study abroad, 31 percent of Goucher’s 1,471 students are Jewish.
- Dreaming of Washington, D.C., Boston, New York or California?
Here are some strong options, where unusually high raw numbers of students are Jewish and high percentages of total student body are Jewish:
New York University (6,000/24 percent) has the most Jewish undergraduates in the nation among private schools. Boston University (5,000/28 percent) is number two.
George Washington University (3,000/28 percent) and American University (1,600/21 percent) are steps away from all of the political action in Washington, D.C.
On the west coast, consider University of California, Santa Barbara (2,750/14 percent) and runners-up University of California campuses at Los Angeles, Berkley and Davis. And if you can get into one of the most selective colleges in the world, consider Stanford University, which also makes the list of 120, with 700 Jewish undergraduates making up 10 percent of the population.
- Minnesota and reciprocity agreements
Reciprocity agreements can allow Wisconsinites access to Minnesota state schools at lower tuition rates. It’s therefore worth mentioning University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and University of Minnesota, Duluth. Both make the public schools list, with more than 1,000 Jewish undergraduates each.
University of Michigan and Indiana University have very large Jewish student bodies, with more than 4,000 students each, and both are in states that have tuition reduction agreements with Wisconsin. For more information, visit msep.mhec.org.
- Ivy League winners
OK, admit it. You’re curious. Which Ivy League school is most Jewish? Stand back. We’re taking a leap. We’re going to say that Cornell University and University of Pennsylvania are, in a sense, tied. Cornell, in a more rural stretch of New York state, beats Penn, which is enmeshed with Philadelphia much like Marquette is with Milwaukee. Cornell wins this imaginary battle by 500 in raw numbers with 3,000 Jewish undergraduates. But Penn is five points ahead on a percentage basis, with 26 percent of its student body reportedly Jewish. So it’s a tie, with Columbia and Harvard universities serving as runners-up.
- Some like it hot
Have you had it with Wisconsin winters? Looking to escape our wonderful world of eight-month ice ages? There are quite a few heavily Jewish student bodies in warmer places and for whatever reason, many of them are state schools. The University of Florida has more Jewish undergraduates than any school in the nation, with 6,500, according to the lists. Located in Gainesville in northern Florida, it’s 19 percent Jewish.
Other Florida schools also make the list, like University of Miami, but you can also consider Arizona State University, University of Texas in Austin (Austin is considered a liberal city – think Madison without snow or brats), Tulane University in New Orleans and Emory University in Atlanta as nice warm-weather options.
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