Wealthy Jewish families are not having their college-bound children apply for Ivy League schools following antisemitic incidents and protests against Israel.
Schools in conservative states, like Washington University in Missouri, Vanderbilt University in Tennessee and Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Texas are seeing the influx of applications from Jewish students who are passing on top-tier universities like Harvard and Columbia, the New York Post reported. The parents cited protests in support of Palestinians on college campuses.
“They’re not paying a single dollar more to the schools,” college admissions consultant Christopher Rim said. “They don’t want to be associated with these schools. They are totally out.”
At one protest in support of Palestine, attendees chanted a slogan that has connotations of wiping out Israel after a Columbia University professor called the attacks “exhilarating.” Other demonstrations saw the protesters make statements like “resistance is justified” in the wake of a deadly Oct. 7 terrorist attack carried out by Hamas on multiple locations in southern Israel that killed over 1,400 people.
Rim described how one of his clients who considered Columbia his “dream school” instead chose to apply to Emory University in Georgia and Washington University.
“After everything that’s happened on campuses, this family is like, ‘You know what, we don’t want to go to any Ivy,’” Rim told the New York Post.
Rim also revealed that former clients reached out to him, seeking assistance in transferring out of colleges in the wake of antisemitic incidents.
Harold Hutchison on November 27, 2023
