Posted on 04/29/2023 12:33:15 PM PDT by Twotone
Kemp Mill Synagogue is a spiritual home to lobbyists, policy scholars, and White House staffers. It looks out over the opening of a lushly wooded forest valley in suburban Maryland, just down the street from a horse farm. One of its common nicknames used to be Congregation Bnei Ivy—the people of the Ivy League.
The name alludes to an enduring way of life for an influential segment of American Jews. The eight Ivy League schools are a collective stand-in for the meritocratic system that turned the children and grandchildren of penniless Yiddish-speakers into some of the richest and most important people in America. In Kemp Mill Synagogue’s case, it really did seem as if everyone there had gone to an Ivy League school, or had sent several of their children to one. But that was almost a generation ago. “I’m not sure the nickname fits anymore,” said Tevi Troy, a congregant, historian, Cornell alumnus, and former Bush administration official.
For Jews, an Ivy League degree was both a status symbol and a crucial element in a functioning and merit-based system of social mobility. An Ivy education was proof of a durable theory that Jews—like other immigrant communities—could become normalized in American society through sheer ability, which could be recognized, nurtured, and rewarded through institutions that everyone still trusted and even admired. Like other elite realms, the Ivies became places where Jews were numerous and comfortable. Some 25% of the Harvard student body was Jewish from the 1960s onward. Yale was perhaps as much as one-third Jewish in the ’70s and ’80s. The University of Pennsylvania was always mythologized as being 40% or even a half Jewish, though the best numbers indicate the high-water mark was more in the 35% range.
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Yes we can hope
To be clear, “plain normal smart good kids” are fine, but I have one (and another on the way) that the Ivies used to go out of their way to find, and at whom to throw scholarship money.
I am completely eclipsed by my son academically and athletically, but he doesn’t really have a shot at my alma mater, even as a legacy. “Rich trans-generational legacy” is what matters: old money, usually.
Lesser-performing - far lesser-performing - kids get these spots if they have the requisite skin color. That starts with the most prestigious prep schools, and is also true with the Ivies.
White middle class kids aren’t wanted, even when they are outrageously smart, hard-working, talented, have won award after award, etc. It just doesn’t matter.
These schools want kids of a certain color who can simply make it through college. That is the goal.
Ultimately, it is the end of the idea that the “smartest kids” go to these schools. They don’t.
Fun Fact, four friends from the Little League World Series Champs in 1989 (including Chris Drury, ex NHL player) bought the Colony Grill.
There are no more quotas for Jews. Yale stopped it’s quota on Jew sin 1978, I think, a few years after they admitted women.
The quotas on Asians are “quiet quotas.”
The convention is to disqualify Asians on “social” grounds.
This is true for Exeter and the big prep schools as well. The top math students in NYC for instance, even when they have other outstanding qualifications, are passed over by the top North East prep schools i.e., Exeter and Choate.
There are a few outstanding prep schools, notably McCallie in Tennessee, which are taking advantage of the admissions racism in the Northeast and recruiting, race-blind and socioeconomic status-blind, many of the highest performing middle schoolers in North America.
The price for racism is starting to be felt in things like national math and science competitions, where race, sex, and race and sex stories don’t count.
You can imagine which prep schools and colleges are losing their crowns.
I thought MIT was a holdout against racist admissions policies. That is no longer true?
“Many schools are secretly hoping the Supreme Court rules against Harvard because they have been scooping up all the talented black applicants.”
I don’t talk about it much but I am a Harvard grad.
The “talented blacks” at Harvard were—to put it bluntly—mostly pathetic (with a very few exceptions).
They continued on to rise way above their talent level in the corporate world due to affirmative action.
Almost inevitably they finally got promoted high enough so they could do real damage to their employer—and then their lack of intelligence and competence became toxic to everyone around them.
We’re in the thick of choosing colleges now. I have a senior and a junior, both are top students, one excels in athletics the other music.
My senior wanted to go to Brown, was recruited for football. We were very put off by the in-your-face wokeism and LGBTQ nonsense during the tour. My son would not have been a fit there.
He’s going to Michigan next fall on a 4-year Army ROTC scholarship. Saving me over $200k which is nice.
Michigan had over 98,000 applications and accepted 7,500. Crazy. The fact he had the Army scholarship put my son over the top. They charge the government full freight.
My wife went to Johns Hopkins, is way smarter than me. My junior will apply there as well as other “fancy” schools - Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Dartmouth, a few others. His safety schools are WPI and UMASS Amherst. We’ll see what happens. Hopefully he’ll get an NROTC or AFROTC scholarship.
Got some time for our 3rd son, he’s in 6th grade. I’ll be happy when it’s all over.
The Ivies want diversity?
Make ‘em take poor White Conservative kids. THAT would be diversity.
Oh, and of course fire a whole crapload of the faculty and administrators and replace them with rock ribbed gun-toting, bible-thumping, beer-drinking, Conservatives.
Then they would look a whole lot more like America.
It has been better than the others but still woke at times.
My mom is an alum of a private Methodist college. They are going under and is asking the taxpayer for a bailout. 🙄
The second-oldest college in what is now the US is William and Mary College in Virginia. It’s not an Ivy (and not in a northern state), but a book back in the 1980s about “the public Ivies” included William and Mary among them.
My understanding is that there are quiet quotas on all high performers whether Asian Jewish or white male or female.
No question there are ramifications for going to an ivy or a trad prep. And they will be felt.
Even some of thetechs are failing in this regard
MIT admission app has questions on sexual orientation etc or the did as recently as 2018
The Harvard-NC law suit has documented just how distorted their admissions process is. According to some of the documents, if Harvard admitted students only from the top 10% of its applicants the Hispanic share would plummet from 14.9% to 2.7%. The Black share would vanish from 15.8% to 0.9%. The number of Asians admitted would double from 24.9 to 51.7%.
This process is unfair to the minority students who end up struggling to compete in the classroom. It also hurts our country by limiting the number of Asians who potentially could make great contributions to our security and our economy.
Is that what they say? LOL. They used to claim they had no problem with faculty/student harassment too.
Harvard and MIT are both desperate to recruit the best minority students out there. They run special programs the summer before fall semester and provide huge support for all four years.
????
Those numbers match my experience—about one out of twenty blacks belonged there.
I found similar numbers in management in the workplace.
Corporations have flushed trillions of dollars of their shareholders down the toilet with decades of affirmative action.
MIT—under that Venezuelan president—has been woke indeed!!!!
But it has a big issue that limits any pro-black admissions policy—they still require all undergraduates to pass 8.01 Physics (calculus-based classical mechanics)!!!!
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/8-01sc-classical-mechanics-fall-2016/resources/video-introduction/
Now they have a slower version of 8.01 that allows less well-prepared students more time to master and pass this difficult course!!!
Because of 8.01, MIT still requires SATs for all applicants.
Harvard needs an 8.01!!!!
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