Jews choose U. of Florida, NYU

By · September 4, 2007

More Jewish students choose the University of Florida than any other public university, while New York University is their top pick among private universities.

That’s according to a list of the 60 most popular college campuses for Jewish undergraduates, published as the Insider’s Guide to College in this month’s Reform Judaism magazine. The popularity list used raw numbers, and the list was divided by public and private institutions.

The University of Florida in Gainesville heads the list in the public category for the second year in a row with 5,500 Jewish undergraduates. Next are the University of Central Florida and the University of Maryland, College Park, each with 5,000 Jewish undergraduates. York University in Toronto and Rutgers University in New Jersey each have 4,500 Jewish undergraduates.

Among private universities, New York University has 4,000 Jewish undergraduates, followed by Boston University, Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania with 3,000 each. Yeshiva University ranks fourth on the list of private schools with 2,810 Jewish undergraduates.

Not surprisingly, Yeshiva heads the guide’s list showing the 20 colleges with the highest percentage of Jews – 93.5 percent of its undergraduates are Jewish. Next is Brandeis University with 61.7 percent, then Barnard College with 43.5 percent. The Ivy League schools with the highest percentage of Jewish students are Harvard and Penn, with 30 percent each.

The guide is published in partnership with Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life and the Union for Reform Judaism’s college department.